Q

* Carl A. Cohn, 47, was named this week as superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District. He takes office Nov. 10. Cohn is currently Area B superintendent, the supervisor in charge of Polytechnic High School and the schools feeding into it.

* Changing of the guard: Cohn replaces the retiring E. Tom Giugni. Giugni arrived in 1986 with a mixed reputation. He charmed most naysayers and leaves office well-liked and respected. Giugni is credited by most with reorganizing and modernizing the district. Test scores have declined, however, as non-English-speaking children from poor families have swamped district schools.

* Background: Cohn is a Long Beach native who has spent most of his career in the district as a counselor or administrator. He also taught at Dominguez High in Compton, Cal State Los Angeles and the University of Pittsburgh. He has a doctorate from UCLA in administrative and policy studies as well as degrees in counseling and philosophy. His wife, Kathleen, is a professor at Cal State Los Angeles. They live in Long Beach and have two children, Tyler, 8, and Meryl, 6.

* Interviewer: Times staff writer Howard Blume

Q What are the unique challenges faced by the Long Beach Unified School District?

A Long Beach is extremely diverse. . . . We have substantial white and Hispanic populations. Some schools are substantially Cambodian; some are substantially African-American. It is a genuinely diverse student population. . . . Our challenge is to make that work, and make that work for schools by delivering on our primary mission, which is student achievement.

Q Where does the district need to make progress?

A I don’t think we are doing enough to get all of our parents involved, and I think that’s absolutely crucial. All of the research I read indicates that there’s a direct correlation between parental involvement and student achievement.

We are doing a much better job than we’ve done in the past, but we still have to do a lot more. . . . With regard to minority parents, schools have not been the types of institutions that made parents feel welcome. . . . As our schools became more and more minority, we did not change as much as we should have to accommodate minority parents.

Q You went to Catholic schools growing up. What did you take from that experience that you can apply to the public schools?

A When I look back, what you had was a situation where the teachers had very high expectations for me. And they communicated those expectations to my family. Any public school can have those expectations.

Those public schools that are doing the best job of raising test scores and making gains in student achievement are doing the same thing.

Q Isn’t that an oversimplification? How can high expectations do the trick if, for example, class sizes keep getting larger and students can’t get individual attention to reinforce those expectations?

A If you look at class size in most of the parochial schools that youngsters like me went to

if 40-some 8th graders showed up, that’s what the nun had. Achievement is not always a measure of class size. That’s what we’re finding in elementary schools like Whittier and Signal Hill. Their class size is about the same as any other school, and they’re making the gains. . . . They make do with the same budget as anybody else.

Q When you accepted the board’s appointment as superintendent, you said the late Mary Butler was a major influence in your thinking about education and your belief in high expectations. Talk about her and her influence on you.

A She was an absolutely fearless community leader who was a no-nonsense lady when it came to the importance of youngsters doing the right thing. She worked in the emergency room of St. Mary’s Hospital as a technician. That was her job for pay. But in the community she was a volunteer who did the PTA and was always available to help the schools.

She was the first black PTA president at Poly High School. She just had a way of being able to get to the heart of the matter, cut away all the bull and hone in on what the problem was. And (to) speak very directly about what the solution might be. No one could con her.

There isn’t a difficult day that goes by that I don’t think of her and wonder what Mary’s advice would be.

Q You originally wanted to be a priest. What changed that?

A 1968. Robert Kennedy was killed. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. I had been in the seminary for nine years. I had three years left . . . to become a priest. I felt it was important to get out and attempt to do something in public service to make a difference.

Other people also started leaving the seminary, so you sort of followed. Some went into social work, some into teaching. You made your decision based on where you thought you could make the greatest contribution.

Q Your first teaching job was at Dominguez High School in Compton in 1969. What did you take out of that experience?

A I learned everything that anyone needs to know about how to handle a classroom and youngsters in a difficult situation. I worked incredibly hard. . . . We had race riots, disruptions, that sort of thing. Everything that one could possibly learn about in terms of surviving in an urban school.

If there’s one thing I learned about myself, it is that working in urban schools was a true calling for me and that’s what I was looking for. I substituted my idealism in the belief that I was going to save the world as a priest and decided I was going to apply that to urban schools.

Q You have spent much of your career dealing with the problems of inner-city schools. How would you also address the concerns of the suburban parents whom the district is in danger of losing to private schools?

A I’ve always been committed to the notion that the public schools are for everybody. . . . It’s very important that the parents on the east side, and other neighborhoods, that they believe they have a vital stake in the future of the school system and that the school system is going to be responsive to their needs. They are crucial to whatever future definition we make of the Long Beach school system.

Q Under your supervision, numerous school restructuring projects got started and the district opened a school for homeless children and a parents’ center. What was your role in these endeavors?

A The thing that I’ve done is to create that climate where the best and brightest feel that if they have an idea, they can follow through with it, that their superior isn’t going to say no. . . . I want to a create a climate of healthy competition among schools for change and innovation.

Q You also made it clear to staff that you wanted the number of students’ suspensions reduced? A I told them that this was an important goal and that they needed to find alternatives to reduce the number of out-of-school suspensions. But at the same time we wanted to improve students’ behavior.

Q Aren’t those contradictory goals?

A Not necessarily; a lot of people think those are at odds. I don’t see it that way. What you just asked presumes that a suspension is effective. What we found was that suspensions had become so routine and commonplace that they weren’t effective, and in many ways they may have been serving to reinforce the notion that if you want a vacation all you have to do is break a rule. . . . We weren’t improving behavior by suspending the kids.

I asked administrators to come up with a program that can keep kids in school AND improve their behavior. . . . There is the on-campus suspension program. The students go to a special teacher for a day. They don’t eat lunch with the other youngsters. . . . If you have a teacher who is really equipped to work with a youngster, you actually can work on the behavior. You can make progress.

Q Some people say that in an era of limited resources, schools should concentrate almost exclusively on their core academic mission. Others feel that precious resources must be spent on expensive, but needed, services, such as health care, parenting classes, counseling, day care and transportation. Where do you stand?

A It’s a really important debate. I lean toward those who say the schools should be the focal point for additional services, that juvenile justice, probation services, community-based policing, health care--all of those services, in an optimum situation, could be delivered at the school site. But I don’t believe they should be delivered by school personnel.

The key there is that, whatever public entity it is, the expert is coming to the campus to dispense the service. It is not the school district taking on unrealistic expectations to dispense to the family all public services.