Minority Superintendent Has a Vision for Schools

The school board voted unanimously this week to hire a young, energetic administrator to lead the state’s fourth-largest school district through the challenges of budget cuts, overcrowding and disappointing student achievement.

Carl A. Cohn, 43, said he would set high standards for himself and students, vowing that Long Beach Unified would become renowned for increasing student achievement. He also pledged to represent all parts of a diverse, sometimes divided school system that encompasses rich and poor, old blood and recent immigrant, crowded inner city and spacious suburbia.

“I will be superintendent of the entire school district,” Cohn said to well-wishers at Monday’s brief board meeting.

About 50 spectators, including Cohn’s wife and two children, broke into applause for him three times during Monday’s 15-minute meeting. Cohn was greeted by applause when he attempted a rapid, low-key entrance--five minutes late--from the rear of the board chamber.

“I guess there’s no place to hide,” said a startled, bemused Cohn. The board’s vote to hire him also inspired clapping, as did his remarks.

Cohn, the district’s first minority superintendent, has never been a school system superintendent. The Long Beach native has worked as a counselor or administrator in Long Beach schools for most of his 23-year career. Since 1990, he has been the Area B Superintendent, the administrator who oversees Polytechnic High School and its feeder schools.

The selection of Cohn drew praise from board members, teachers and parents who have worked with him. Trustees conceded that Cohn had less experience than other finalists for the job, but expressed confidence in his abilities.

“Long Beach is going to be well served by Dr. Cohn,” said board President Mary Stanton, who praised Cohn for his determination to set high standards for student achievement.

Trustee Bobbie Smith called Cohn an “instructional leader who keeps up to date on educational research and what is working in various schools.” She also lauded his human relations skills.

Board members and Cohn are still negotiating his salary and the length of his contract.

Although Cohn enters office on a swell of goodwill, he faces many challenges.

The problems include an anticipated record enrollment of more than 76,000 students, thousands of whom do not speak English. The district sorely needs instructors bilingual in Spanish or Khmer, the tongue of Cambodia.

One of his first jobs will be to select top-level administrators. He must, of course, replace himself as Area B administrator. Cohn must also fill the shoes of highly regarded business director Ron Bennett, who took a similar job in Fresno. Officials said Bennett will be missed at a time when more funding cuts loom because of state funding cuts.

Cohn offered no magic solutions. He said the district would continue to aggressively recruit and train bilingual teachers and make whatever budget cuts were needed.

He does, however, have an agenda.

“I plan to visit all of the schools as quickly as possible,” he said. “I want to talk to people about what’s going on.

“I plan to conduct a series of meetings with juvenile justice officials, the Probation Department and law enforcement agencies to talk about school safety and additional steps we ought to take to make our schools more safe.”

Cohn said he hopes that Long Beach Unified will pioneer a system to measure how well each school is doing. That information should be available to parents and district officials, Cohn said, adding that a priority will be to increase parent involvement.

Supporters point to Cohn’s Area B administration as evidence that he pushes hard for positive change. In two years, Cohn supervised the opening of the district’s first parent center and a school for homeless children. Schools under his charge inaugurated numerous reorganization projects.

Cohn said his main contribution to such projects was cutting through red tape. He said he does not want bureaucracy to stand in the way of a good idea.

Throughout his career Cohn has not been afraid to entertain new ideas or speak plainly. As an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, he co-authored in the mid-1980s a series of newspaper articles advocating aggressive educational reform.

He suggested that Pennsylvania devise student tests that tied increased state aid to success rather than failure. He wrote that schools would be more competitive if parents could choose their public school. He also supported experiments with teacher competency testing and merit pay.

In Long Beach, he advocated year-round education on academic grounds years before the board approved the controversial schedule because of overcrowding. At the same time, he suggested that the district open a “fundamental school” that would “embrace higher academic, behavior, dress codes and attendance standards.”

He once observed that the district should work more closely with churches in minority communities. Whittier Elementary in Long Beach later did just that, using local churches as the base for an elementary tutoring program.

The new superintendent said he has always admired action-minded, plain-speaking people with conviction and courage.

Cohn has these attributes too, said Jim Deaton, president of the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach. “Dr. Cohn is very open, honest, upfront. The bottom line for him is that he really cares about what’s happening in the schools, and he wants kids to get the best education they can get.”

Cohn’s own primary education came in local Catholic schools. One of six children of a painter and a homemaker, he grew up in a mixed-income, mixed-ethnicity neighborhood.

At 23, he abandoned plans to enter the priesthood and became a teacher. He first taught at Dominguez High in Compton in 1969, taking a counseling job at Polytechnic High in 1971. He moved up to administrative positions before teaching educational administration at the University of Pittsburgh in 1984 and then at Cal State Los Angeles. He returned to Long Beach Unified in 1988 as director of attendance. He became Area B Superintendent in 1990.

Without a background in school district financing, Cohn will have to select and rely on a sharp business director, said Deaton, the teachers union official. “He has catch-up work to do in some areas of experience,” Deaton said.

Although some parents are delighted with Cohn, others expressed reservations about his style, calling him aggressive and sometimes condescending. Given his background in inner-city schools, they worry about his ability to deal with the active, opinionated parents of suburbia.

“He is used to dealing with people that just shut up and listen to him, illegal aliens and parents afraid of school, parents who are delighted to be invited to school, but don’t have any opinions about it,” said Audrey Morton, a PTA leader who has worked with Cohn. “But he really didn’t know how to deal with us.”

Even critics said they believe that Cohn has the talent and desire to grow into the job and win over skeptics. His predecessor, E. Tom Giugni, overcame initial hostility by tirelessly courting the goodwill of parents and employees.

The example is not lost on Cohn. Nor is the magnitude of the challenges ahead.

“I’m aware that I will need to reach out to all parts of the school district,” he said. “I’ll need everyone’s help.”