We Need a Superintendent to Bring Us Together : Schools: William Anton leaves at the worst possible time, for reasons other than he states.

When Los Angeles schools Supt. William Anton announced his resignation last week after only 26 months on the job, he blamed board members for forcing him out.

It would have been wiser for him to say that his reasons for leaving now--during the greatest economic crisis in the history of the Los Angeles Unified School District-- was because of personal problems, because budget problems were overwhelming, because the state chose to balance its budget on the backs of our children.

In order to put this in perspective, one must understand the sequence of events that led up to Anton’s untimely resignation. In 1990, when Leonard Britton was in his third year as superintendent of the district, the teachers union lashed out against him and encouraged some board members to oust him.

When Britton resigned, the union backed Anton as Britton’s replacement. (Behind the scenes, Anton had been undermining Britton.) I was one of the board members asked by the union to support Anton’s superintendency; I refused to do so. I would not participate in the coup d’etat, which cost the district an enormous amount of money ($240,000, the cost of buying out the remainder of Britton’s contract).

There is no question that these are the most difficult of all times for public education and the most difficult of all times for the Los Angeles school system. It is unconscionable that a superintendent would choose this particular time to leave. You might ask yourself why today, Sept. 30, is his last day--why not Dec. 18 or June 30? Why not wait until after the implementation of the cuts to help our struggling schools, students and employees? Why now?

Anton’s decision to leave today gave him the assurance that he would get his full accumulated vacation pay before any cuts were made. His vacation back-pay is $153,000; if he had waited until the end of the school year, it would have been reduced--so he chose to leave now. One would assume that an annual retirement salary of $130,000 would have been enough, considering the economic crisis the school district is experiencing.

The board--the entire board, not just four of the seven members--decided that a salary cut of 17% was simply not acceptable. Members began to push for further reduction in administration. Unfortunately, Anton chose to protect the “good ol’ boys” instead of being concerned about all the district employees when he refused to make additional central administrative cuts and instead chose to balance the budget on the backs of our employees.

The greatest fallacy perpetuated by this superintendent was that somehow the board controlled everything he did. He called it “micro-managing.” The reality is this board of education gave Anton more authority and more control than any superintendent I can remember. He was given full decision-making powers over every administrative position in the district.

Never at any time did any board member ask Anton to leave. Quite the contrary, we expected him to remain with the district. What we were looking for was leadership, not dictatorship.

The most important decision the board must make now is how to help this district survive. We must hold together, we must find every possible way to assure that public education survives. This is bigger than the Los Angeles Unified School District--we are talking about whether all children will have the opportunity for a good education.

We desperately needed a superintendent to bring us together, not divide us. I urge parents, students and employees to join together in fighting for the future of public education. United we stand, divided we fall.