Sweetwater Faces Its Future Minus Trujillo : Education: The new board of the state’s largest high school district, after pushing superintendent of 5 1/2 years out, will now determine district’s direction.

The future academic and management direction of the state’s largest high school district is up in the air following the buyout by Sweetwater Union trustees of Supt. Anthony Trujillo’s contract Thursday night.

Board members of the sprawling South Bay district, with 27,500 students--75% nonwhite--spread through 18 junior and senior high schools, in essence fired Trujillo, a move that seemed inevitable after November elections that left the board with four trustees either hostile or lukewarm toward him.

But the action was consummated in a mutual written agreement, under which Trujillo resigned and the board acceded to a generous financial termination package, in order to avoid costly litigation that Trujillo promised to pursue if the board had argued that he had violated his contract, which ran through mid-August, 1992.

On Friday, Trujillo expressed relief that the ordeal was over, while attributing his downfall to the continued inability of some board members and their supporters to recognize demographic changes that have made the South Bay district heavily Latino and his insistence on higher expectations for minority students and on hiring more nonwhite administrators.

However, his opponents said Trujillo’s abrasive personality and slipshod management were to blame for his demise, and they denied that there would be any backslide in the district’s steady academic progress during his 5 1/2-year tenure.

District educators said Friday that they hope to put behind them the recent paralysis of district functions and focus on whether trustees remain committed to the educational philosophy pushed by Trujillo.

“The key will be the philosophy of the new board,” Jaime Mercado, principal of Mar Vista High and a 35-year South Bay resident, said Friday. “Do they believe in higher expectations for kids going to college? Do they believe in letting people do the job they were hired to do? That is what’s significant.

“Tony did irritate some people by his method of communicating, and couple that with his innovative programs on dropouts, on sending more kids to college, on getting teachers to set higher expectations for minority students--maybe someone like that can’t last unless they change gears and stop being innovative and forceful.”

Another longtime principal, Alan Goycochea, said that “Tony was a tough guy to work for.”

“But, in my 12 years as a principal, he was the only superintendent who ever talked to me in terms of kids going to college, of kids taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test, of our kids scoring better on tests, of cutting the number of dropouts.

“And I think that he brought minority education and parent involvement to the point where they will never tolerate a step back now. I hope we will find a new superintendent similarly steeped in curricular and instructional matters who has the sensitivity to the needs of this particular community,” Goycochea said.

At Mar Vista and Sweetwater high schools, the percentage of students going on to college rose from about 10%-15% before Trujillo arrived to more than 50% in the past two years.

Sweetwater board president Lorenzo Provencio, a Chula Vista elementary teacher elected to his post in November, said on Friday that he voted to remove Trujillo based on management and curriculum differences.

Provencio cited what he said are sloppy budgeting procedures that resulted in a several million dollar shortfall in the district’s present budget, as well as what he called differences in philosophy over whether more students should be pushed to consider college education following graduation.

“My problem is that, while this is a big district that spends a lot of money, I don’t think we know where all of it is,” Provencio said. The district was the subject of a county grand jury investigation and audit by the state Office of the Auditor General last year following allegations of computer and car-theft rings run by district employees and other criminal activities.

Both reports exonerated the district of all charges but the auditor said that there were several cases of sloppy record keeping that indicated the district needed to tighten its control over expenditures, equipment, purchasing, cafeteria operations, payroll and personnel.

Provencio also said he “doesn’t think the district should force college down the throats of those who don’t want to go, but rather should be realistic and prepare them for the work force, to be a mechanic or work at J.C. Penney’s.” A veteran board member, Lita David, a teacher in the San Ysidro elementary school district, had opposed Trujillo’s hiring from the start and indicated Friday that her view had never changed.

“I think he introduced many innovative programs but I didn’t like his management style,” David said. “I want to reassure parents that just because Trujillo resigned, we are still going to continue bilingual education and other programs that are ongoing.”

Trujillo’s resignation was softened by the board’s agreement to pay his $116,000 annual salary through August, to fund a $110,000 retirement annuity, to pay his and his wife’s medical insurance premiums through age 70 (he is now 57), and to make a $40,000 payment to the state’s teacher retirement fund.

“I guess I’ll never have to work again,” he quipped Friday. But already, Trujillo has plans to set up a small institute to train and educate Latinos in how to lobby government agencies, raise funds and in general become more visible in the political process.

Trujillo expressed irritation Friday that his aggressive actions to improve minority education and push affirmative action were always seen as a “Hispanic power move.”

“People somehow think that any moves to help a community long repressed amounts to a conspiracy to take over the world,” he said.

Trujillo also criticized trustees for not realizing that the district has become a large urban system in which old-style micromanagement--where board members push friends and longtime acquaintances for positions--can no longer work.