Schools Chief to Retire After Smooth Ride in Rocky Times : Education: Supt. E. Tom Giugni announces he will leave Dec. 31 after six years. The district will start a nationwide search for his successor.

Supt. E. Tom Giugni, once an outsider with a questionable reputation, announced his retirement this week to a chorus of praises from board members, officials and employees. His legacy includes a vigorous school construction program, increased community involvement in the public schools and a plan to give schools more authority to solve problems.

Despite declining test scores and increasing dropout rates, supporters said he leaves behind a reputation for calm and progressive leadership in the state’s fourth-largest school system.

Giugni, 61, who served previously as superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District, said simply that the time had come for him to retire. “I always said I would retire when I was 60 and I waited a year beyond that. . . . It was a promise I made to my wife. I pushed my luck.”

The ride was smoother and lasted longer than skeptics predicted when Giugni arrived in 1986. The just-chosen superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District was difficult to deal with and insensitive to employee concerns, said union officials familiar with him.

This Northern Californian was an outsider in a district that traditionally promoted from within. This older-generation administrator, just a few years shy of retirement, was being asked to take on one of the country’s most rapidly changing school districts.

He would be heading an administration that some accused of being inaccessible, out of touch. Employee relations were already strained.

But in this and other areas, Giugni surprised. Educators said they were impressed with his friendliness and low-key style, and his skill in organizing, choosing good subordinates, extracting government aid and getting help from surrounding cities, colleges and private businesses.

“Long Beach Unified was a very closed system,” board member Jenny Oropeza said, “meaning that the press, public and parents were not welcome, were not encouraged to ask questions, to visit schools. Those on the inside made the decisions, and no one else counted.

“Tom came in and embraced parents, our ethnic-minority community and the notion of change--that maybe we had things we could better. He’s left a legacy of inclusion.”

Giugni guided the schools through turmoil that rocked the district but created little enmity toward him. Determined to get off to a good start, he immediately invited employees in to air their grievances and he left his door open. During his stewardship, the school system began its controversial conversion to year-round schools. By and large, angry parents castigated board members, but not Giugni.

He supported efforts to raise employee salaries but was also the man at the top when the board rescinded a large pay raise due to insufficient state funding. Non-teaching employees worked until April without a contract for the current school year. The two sides needed a state mediator to help settle the dispute, but union officials did not blame Giugni.

“He has his opinions and we have ours,” said Darlene Dunn, president of the union for non-teaching employees, “but he will sit there and listen to what you have to say and there is an ongoing dialogue. It’s a matter of respect. Your opinion is respected.”

Before the 1988 election, Giugni debated future board member Oropeza and others who wanted board members to run by election district rather than at-large. He lost that argument at the ballot box and was soon confronted with an almost entirely new board. He quickly won the enthusiastic support of the new trustees.

Board President Bobbie Smith said Giugni is a master at working with elected officials, but he is also skilled at dealing with employees and staying out of their way as much as possible.

“You let them do their jobs and you’re there to assist them,” she said of his style.

Other tangible accomplishments include:

* Decentralizing district organization. He broke up the district into sections, hired five area superintendents and gave more authority to school committees. “It used to be all by formula, everyone got the same thing regardless of what your staff was like and who your students were,” Oropeza said.

* Leading the district through one of the most aggressive construction programs in the state to cope with skyrocketing enrollment. In addition to several new schools, each high school will get a new science building. The construction is almost entirely financed by state funds for which other school systems competed intensely.

* Moving ninth-graders to high school and sixth-graders from elementary to middle school in keeping with current trends.

* Authorizing a one-room schoolhouse at Two Harbors on Santa Catalina Island to spare children the long, bumpy bus ride to the Long Beach district’s school in Avalon.

* Developing a partnership with Long Beach City College that allows high school students to receive college credit for high school courses.

* Setting up partnerships with area cities and private businesses to help the schools. These include tutoring arrangements, regular company tours, scholarship programs, employment internships and even a program in which elementary students become the pen pals of successful business people. There are now 260 business partnerships.

The missing ingredient is proof positive that the changes have worked. The dropout rate for the class of 1991 was 31.6%, up from 24.6% for the 1986 graduating class. And test scores have declined virtually across the board from mid-1980s scores.

There are numerous contributing factors. The number of students from families on welfare has increased about 19% since 1988. In all, 32% of district students are members of families receiving government aid. Such students historically have high dropout rates and low test scores.

In addition, district students speak some 48 different languages. More than 24,000 of the district’s 74,000 students have a limited ability to speak English. The number has gone up every year since Giugni joined the district. The district has vigorously recruited bilingual teachers. By its own count, it still needs about 200 more instructors who speak Spanish and 100 more who speak Khmer, the language of Cambodia. In the meantime, dozens of instructors teach these classes while learning the foreign language.