A Matter of Principal : Local Panel Chose Hamilton High’s New Leader but the Process Wasn’t Easy

With the sudden departure of Wunderkind Principal Jim Berk last year, the Hamilton High Schools Complex took the unusual step of launching its own nationwide search for a replacement.

Today, San Bernardino educator Nina Russo takes over at the Westside campus, becoming the first Los Angeles Unified School District principal to be chosen without prior screening by the central administration. She is also the first high school principal hired from outside the district.

But Russo and Hamilton had to surmount troubling obstacles. The months-long hiring process led many to conclude that school-based management--the idea that decisions are best made by parents and teachers in the schools--remains a chimera in the nation’s second-largest district. Hamilton was considered an ideal place for such an experiment to flourish. The 2,400-student complex of three high schools, which includes nationally acclaimed music and humanities magnet schools, has been a center of innovative teaching and enjoys strong support from parents and others in the community.

Berk had been the youngest high school principal ever named in the district and had served for less than three years before leaving at the age of 32 to take a job in the recording industry. Dynamic and charismatic, he was widely credited with steering the school to prominence.

The school district initially approved Hamilton’s procedure for choosing Berk’s successor, which involved sending flyers to district high schools and advertising the job in national education journals.

The 18-member selection committee eventually settled on Russo, who was the regional manager in charge of alternative education programs in San Bernardino County.

But because she was an outsider without extensive public school experience, district officials forced the group to reopen the competition, selection committee members said.

In the end, about 30 qualified applicants responded and all were interviewed. Russo’s name kept rising to the top of the list. Hamilton offered her the job.

But district officials, including the heads of the senior high and personnel divisions, balked at the last minute over her salary, enraging Hamilton’s selection committee and nearly causing Russo to back out.

Russo, who has a doctorate and 20 years experience in education, had been earning almost $73,000 a year in her previous job. The district refused to pay her the salary advertised in the announcement it had approved--$64,000 to $80,000 a year, subject to the pay cuts that the school board ordered for all employees this year.

She said Wednesday that she agreed to accept an annual salary of $60,000--a $13,000 pay cut-- “because of the quality of the people at Hamilton who interviewed me. You don’t find a lot of such people in one place, idealists who still have stars in their eyes.”

Los Angeles school district policy only credits administrative experience within the district. Russo will be “rated in” as a teacher, and paid the lowest salary on the principals’ pay schedule, which is lower than some of those she will be supervising.

Irene Yamahara, the district’s associate superintendent of personnel, said Russo got credit for her years of teaching, not for those as an administrator. “That is what district policy has always been,” she said.

Russo warned, however, that the struggle for power between the district and the school is far from over.

“The central office is living in the Stone Age, and I won’t be here very long if it doesn’t change,” Russo said. “I’m taking a chance.”

She said she is particularly concerned about whether her performance will be evaluated by district officials or by parents, teachers and other members of the Hamilton community. The Hamilton selection committee believes it has authority to evaluate her under the school-based management plan, but the district retains the authority to set salaries.

Dan Isaacs, head of the district’s senior high division, called Russo “a sincere educator who will do a very fine job.” He said her selection shows the success of school-based management.

Some members of the Hamilton High selection committee do not agree.

Parent Carol Turley, who chaired the selection committee, said the district’s policies effectively prevent hiring from the outside. “It’s an old boys’ club, a closed process. . . . We assumed anyone who came in with the qualifications we were looking for would be regarded the same as anyone within the district. They said we should have asked, not assumed. . . . It does seem to preclude school-based management from choosing (outsiders).”

Turley said the group wanted Russo because she was “so different from every other candidate, especially those within the district.”

“She is really bright, innovative, dedicated and not a company man,” Marcus said. “She didn’t say she’d rebel, but showed herself to be an independent thinker. She’s not going to be a puppet.”

A native of Monterey, Russo started her career as an English teacher at Our Lady of Loretto Grammar School on Union Avenue near downtown Los Angeles. She also worked as a teacher and administrator at a Catholic high school in Salinas before joining the San Bernardino County system as an administrator in 1987.

She has taken students on rope-climbing courses and developed programs for teen-age mothers, juvenile inmates and adult prisoners. For the last two years she supervised five principals and 90 teachers in San Bernardino County schools. She holds a doctorate in education from the University of San Francisco. She comes to Hamilton with an unusual plan for getting to know her new students: Russo says that because she is not moving from her Redlands home for six months, she will bring her sleeping bag to Los Angeles in hopes of staying with a different student’s family each week in different parts of the city.