Cabinet Job Puts Cypress Woman on Children’s Side

Maureen DiMarco, law student, wife, and mother of two daughters in college, wishes every mother could stay at home the way she did when her children were small.

But as Gov.-elect Pete Wilson’s appointee to a new cabinet post for child development and education, she knows the reality is quite different for most California families today: Only 12% of children come from father-breadwinner homes; 25% live below the poverty line; children of incompetent or abusive parents are repeating that cycle, some producing children hopelessly addicted to drugs.

“It is scary and it is terrifying, but it is fixable,” said DiMarco, 42, a moderate Democrat and education activist from Cypress who was named Friday to become secretary for child development and education.

DiMarco, who dropped out of USC to start a family and believes in traditional family values “with a small T,” will become the state’s pre-eminent child advocate. It is believed to be the only such combination cabinet post in the nation. Part of her job will be to define the job as well as to promote Wilson’s positions on education issues, she said.

In a wide-ranging interview Sunday, DiMarco predicted that she will be working to “get the message across about what is coming through the schoolhouse doors.”

Currently, she said, every public classroom contains at least two or three students with severe emotional problems. While teachers should not become nurses or therapists, efforts to help the children must start early, she said. “If a youngster is not succeeding by fourth grade, it’s hard to catch them after that.”

Prevention programs are high on her wish list: prenatal care for mothers, universally accessible preschool for 4-year-olds, early mental health counseling, drug abuse prevention programs and parenting programs.

Specifically, she said Wilson is eager to establish a program to provide a “caring adult” or mentor, for every child. When caring adults cannot be found in a family, outside volunteers from businesses or the neighborhood could offer help through the school or in the home, she said.

Some projects may materialize this year, others--due to the budget deficit--are “definitely on the long-term agenda,” she said. “It’ll take years to get it all done.”

The new position in the cabinet may not even protect some children’s programs from cuts because of the deficit, she said.

“Resources are tight. I do have faith the governor-elect is committed to (children’s issues). . . . I know he’s in it for the long term.”

Some proposals are not expensive. To allow working parents to pay more attention to their children’s schooling, she said business should be encouraged to give employees time off to participate in school activities.

“It’s not a huge economic commitment on the part of business, but it is very significant in the life of a child.”

Part of the job will be to restructure children’s services now available through 167 different state programs, run by 37 different entities and half a dozen state agencies.

DiMarco laughed at initial reports of her “meteoric” rise in state education circles, an “overnight success” that has actually developed over 20 years with a succession of increasingly responsible positions. She has developed a reputation as a consensus leader, unafraid of confrontation.

DiMarco, the middle child of a homemaker mother and businessman father, grew up in semi-rural Webster in upstate New York. The family moved to Covina in 1963, and DiMarco did well enough in school to enter USC on early admissions as a geology major. Calling herself “the last of a more traditional generation,” she left school to marry her husband, Richard, and start a family, all the while intending to “do something” when her children entered school.

Active in school committees and PTA in the Garden Grove Unified School District, she and a neighbor took turns baby-sitting their children so each could take classes to become an instructional aide. Later she served on district programs and committees, always making sure she was home when the children returned from school.

She became one of the state’s first paid parent consultants to evaluate school programs, won a seat on the Garden Grove School Board and served a year as consultant to state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, was president of the California School Boards Assn. and is chairwoman of a state youth policy task force.

“When we agree, it will be a dynamite partnership,” she said of her upcoming relationship with Honig. “When we disagree, it will be a legitimate argument worthy of having.”

Her management style stresses consensus more than majority rule.

“If you influence, you can produce long-term change. If you inflict, it leaves a scar and they shy away from you.”

She said she had called Pete Wilson’s campaign office to offer her support after he gave an education speech that impressed her.

“His vision was more global, and he understood the interrelationship of all the aspects of a child’s life.”

When she received news of her impending appointment, she said: “I was completely blown away. I wasn’t out of shock for five days.

“At first I thought, ‘What an incredible opportunity to pursue my ideas and make a difference for kids. Then I thought . . . ‘A secretary position. Oh, my god, can I do this? Will I have the strength and ability to move this agenda?’ ”

She said she will get an apartment in Sacramento and commute from home, where she already has an office and fax machine.

She can do it now, she said, because her children are grown . . . and gone.

Over the years, as her work took her away from her own home, her husband, a senior research engineer for McDonnell Douglas, sometimes played the role of “Mr. Mom,” and her daughters resented it, she said. But now, college students at Boston University and USC, they have told her they now understand and appreciate her as a female role model, DiMarco said.

She still intends to finish law school, she said, although it will now take longer.

Her upcoming job will be difficult, she acknowledged. “I have no magic answers.

“If everyone will at least struggle with the questions, I know it will improve.”