Making Business a Principal Player in Education : Schools: Program puts executives in the driver’s seat for a day, where many see similarities between running a company and running a campus.

Bank manager Mardelle Flack was one of 62 San Diego County executives who spent Tuesday away from the office, playing principal for a day in a program to get business leaders more involved in schools.

For Flack, it was also a homecoming of sorts.

Thirty-three years ago, Flack graduated from Grant Middle School in Escondido on what was then the outskirts of town.

Now the area around Mission Avenue and Fig Street is densely residential, and the middle school that was once in an open field is surrounded by chain-link fences and two-story apartment complexes.

The physical changes don’t impress Flack, however.

“Even though things have changed a lot, they really do stay the same,” she said. “It’s bigger and all, and things are speeded up more now, but kids are kids.”

Flack was participating in the statewide Principal for a Day program, which involves more than 500 business leaders and is aimed at giving them a better idea of the challenges faced by schools on a day-to-day level.

“Mostly, we’re hoping to enlist their support in a long-term way,” said Jim Esterbrooks of the San Diego County Office of Education.

The lesson learned by many of the executives is that there aren’t a whole lot of differences between running a school and managing a business.

“Things here relate very strongly to the business world,” Flack said, echoing a nationwide sentiment that an infusion of business techniques into schools can cure the country’s educational woes.

James Owen of NCR Corp., who visited Pomerado Elementary School, said: “This is the same thing I do every day. The management techniques are very similar.”

Business managers participating in the program cited difficulties such as scheduling, personality conflicts, information sharing and communication as problems shared by schools and business.

But the program is just one step toward injecting business savvy into education.

“Before you come up with solutions, you’ve got to have the understanding,” said Don Strom, a personnel manager for Hewlett-Packard who visited Poway High.

Hewlett-Packard has already committed itself to Poway High through that school district’s Adopt-a-School program, and most of the other schools and businesses engaged in this week’s activities have been longtime supporters of schools.

“I think there are some innovations that we can share with the schools,” Strom said.

To some of the business leaders new to school involvement, however, the Principal for a Day program had the reverse effect.

“Some of the same things we are struggling with in the company are being handled successfully in the school district,” said David Leigh, a training manager for Sony Corp.

The television manufacturing plant in Rancho Bernardo has spent money developing computer software training and English-language courses that the Poway Unified School District has long offered through adult education classes.

After years of pointing a finger at schools for not properly educating children, businesses are becoming more aware of school conditions and realizing that the difficulties faced there are more complex than they imagined.

“Business people are saying schools need to adjust and change to their marketplace, and they don’t think that schools have made that adjustment as quickly as they should have,” said Bruce Braciszewski of the education office. “There are, however, certainly examples where businesses have struggled with that.”

Some educators, such as Hugh Boyle, president of the San Diego Teachers Assn., believe that the benefits businesses can bring to schools have been oversold, and they cite problems American businesses have had in their own recent past, such as the savings-and-loan crisis.