Principal Vote-Getter : He’s the First in L.A. to Be Chosen by Parents, Teachers and Students Under School-Based Plan

Darrell Hughes arrived at Westside Alternative School in Venice early Monday to shake hands with his constituents--arriving students who had just helped vote him in as their new principal.

For the Los Angeles Unified School District, it was a first. Instead of accepting a principal plucked by district officials from a promotion list, a panel of about 100 Westside Alternative students, parents and teachers conducted the selection process, interviewing 14 candidates before voting overwhelmingly last week for Hughes, 57.

The selection process was closely watched because it is the first attempt in the district to choose a principal under a new school-based management plan that more schools are adopting.

Until now, schools in the Los Angeles school district have entered the uncharted waters of school-based management a toe at a time, their ambitious plans tempered by limited authority. In taking control of the principal selection process, Westside carried the concept of local control of schools a step further.

So far, 78 schools in the district have implemented school-based management, and about half of those have the power to select their own staff, including principals, when openings occur.

Many observers--including some at Westside Alternative--say they doubt that the new system will work well citywide, however.

“There are too many chiefs and not enough Indians,” one exasperated Westside parent shouted near the end of five hours of deliberations at the final round last week, as polite debate turned acrimonious, children complained and participants threatened to walk out.

For Hughes, who until Friday was assistant principal at George Washington Carver Junior High School in South-Central Los Angeles, the new selection method had its uncomfortable moments.

“I felt like I was in the Miss America pageant in another round of interviewing,” said Hughes, a quiet, thoughtful man who said he found going through two interviews in front of so many people “a little intimidating.”

Despite his discomfort with the process, Hughes said it is an improvement over the district’s “strictly political” selection system. He said he thought he had received most previous assignments because he is black, “not because of my ability.”

But Hughes and Gene McCallum, the district official who monitored the selection process, both questioned whether such an intensive participatory selection process will work in schools larger than Westside, which has just 400 students.

“I don’t think you have the same amount of parent participation at other schools,” said McCallum. Nearly one-fourth of the school’s families turned out on the last night of the interviews, he said.

In the past, candidates for school administrative positions took written and oral examinations, participated in role-playing exercises, and were assessed by trained evaluators at a special district center to determine their eligibility for promotion. Those who passed were placed on a list. When openings occurred, regional and district supervisors could choose a name from the list subject to approval by the superintendent or the district deputy superintendent.

The eligibility lists have been depleted, and critics say the selection system is more chaotic.

In most schools, teachers, parents and students have no say in the selection and do not meet the new principal until his or her first day on the job.

Westside Alternative, a magnet school with kindergarten through 12th grades, has historically played a major role in choosing its own teachers and principals, even before school-based management. It is one of Los Angeles’ four so-called alternative schools, which stress open structure and independent learning, multicultural education, and a high level of interaction between parents, students and teachers.

When Westside’s longtime principal, Hugh Gottfried, was transferred to Palms Junior High in November, the school moved quickly to choose a successor, someone who, in the words of search committee Chairwoman Linda Dove, would be “more of a facilitator than a boss, a principal who enjoys leading from the middle, not from in front.”

An ad hoc group of parents, teachers and students advertised the job opening in flyers posted at schools throughout the district, which included a number of special qualifications they wanted, such as “commitment to cultural pluralism and tolerance of differing lifestyles.”

McCallum said three applicants did not meet minimum requirements and were screened out; the remaining 14 names were turned over to Westside.

Over a two-week period, the candidates were invited to visit the school for an informal question-and-answer orientation session, then assigned appointments for individual interviews in which they were grilled about everything from how they would handle a student who swore at them to the relationship between creativity and structure in alternative education.

An average of about 30 people showed up for each of the first four nights of interviews, and nearly 100 went to the five-hour “finals” last Tuesday, when the six leading candidates underwent a last round of questions.

Parent Jerome Seelig said he found the process both fun and a way to stay involved in his child’s education: “It’s sort of like reliving my college days, the ‘60s--that real democracy we all wanted.”

Toward the end, the meetings turned raucous as participants shouted questions through a bullhorn passed among them. At first, teachers, students and parents were split.

Eventually, a consensus emerged, and Hughes won by a landslide. The vote was ratified by the school’s elected leadership council, which forwarded Hughes’ name with that of the two runners-up to district officials.

During his final interview at the school, Hughes assured teachers that he will respect their opinions: “I’m not any smarter than you. We’re all bright, intelligent people. We’ve all gone to college. I would listen to whatever you have to say and probably go along with any suggestion you make.”

Afterward, parents said that Hughes was not the most charismatic or self-assured candidate they heard, but that he inspired confidence and brimmed with creative ideas for solving the problems that plague all magnet schools.