VENTURA : Educator Offered Illinois Position

Cesare Caldarelli, controversial superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District, has been offered the top administrative job at a small school district in suburban Chicago, school officials there said Tuesday.

Caldarelli, who has led the 15,000-student Ventura district the past four years, topped four other finalists for the superintendency of the 2,005-student Bensenville Elementary School District, according to Russ Rodriguez, that district’s board president.

Caldarelli said he is “very much interested” in the Bensenville position, but that it is premature to say he has accepted. He said he and the Illinois board have yet to agree on a contract dealing with such issues as salary and when he would start work.

“They want me yesterday,” he said, declining further comment on his talks with the Bensenville school district. He also would not elaborate on why he applied for the job.

Caldarelli, who is from the Chicago area, receives $93,000 a year to head the Ventura district.

The Illinois offer comes three months after the board voted 3 to 2 not to renew Caldarelli’s so-called evergreen contract, a three-year pact that comes up for renewal annually. The vote left him with two years remaining on his contract. “It’s time for a change,” said Diane Harriman, one of the board members who voted not to renew Caldarelli’s contract. Harriman, a former teacher, said teachers are working without a contract and haven’t had a pay raise in four years.

Rodriguez said the Bensenville school board liked Caldarelli because of “his visionary leadership skills and his ability to be on the cutting edge of curriculum change.” The district will need that, he said, because of changes it is making in the way it educates its students.

Bensenville is among 11 communities chosen to participate in a privately funded program based on President Bush’s America 2000 plan aimed at improving public education.

Rodriguez said the board was not bothered by the controversy surrounding Caldarelli, including a “no confidence” vote against Caldarelli by 93% of Ventura’s teachers two years ago.