Embattled N.Y. Schools Chief Has Crucial Day With Board

The day he took office on Jan. 1, 1990, Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez tried to look out his office windows. The glass was so filthy, he was able to write his name in the dust. Underfoot, the carpet was littered with pieces of wire used to hook up a computer. Fernandez, head of the nation’s largest school system, was told by his secretary that “the custodian says he only vacuums every third day.”

Fernandez summoned the custodian, who said: “We’re only supposed to clean the windows once a year. It’s in our contract.”

It was an early lesson both in the ways of entrenched bureaucracy and education politics.

Three years later, the view for Fernandez, who came to New York from Dade County, Fla., once again is bleak. Today, the Board of Education meets to decide the fate of the forceful and embattled schools chancellor whose curriculum and AIDS education programs not only have been flash points in New York City but have raised national controversy.

Perhaps the loudest complaints came over the so-called Rainbow Curriculum, designed to teach first-graders tolerance for families headed by gay and lesbian couples.

Supporters of Fernandez say the battles represent a major test of the chancellor’s power against the city’s largely autonomous 32 school districts, many of which rejected all or parts of the Rainbow Curriculum.

His future also has become intertwined with mayoral politics, with board members who support Mayor David N. Dinkins also supporting him and at least one member who backs mayoral candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani opposing the chancellor.

Fernandez’s supporters, including the board president, argue that his ouster will renew chaos in a system already battered by budget reductions. Before Fernandez’s appointment, the system of nearly 1 million students went through six chancellors in 12 years.

If Fernandez, 57, is freed from his contract here, he could quickly emerge as a front-runner for superintendent in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school system, which is nearly two-thirds Latino.

“I’ve been very impressed with the gutsy positions (Fernandez) takes,” said Los Angeles School Board President Leticia Quezada.

A high school dropout and ex-gang member who grew up in Spanish Harlem, Fernandez moved quickly to bring about changes. He slashed the board’s bloated central administrative staff, won disbanding of New York’s archaic teacher-licensing agency and stressed greater parent and teacher involvement.

All of these accomplishments were detailed in his biography “Tales Out of School.” The memoir, in which Fernandez detailed his drug use as a youngster and attacked some board members, raised a furor. And in what might be a valedictory, he wrote:

“I have a doomsday scenario . . . whereby I get so angry, so distraught, or get the board so upset, that we decide mutually to end the marriage.”

Times Education Writer Sandy Banks contributed to this story.