Q&A; : Tradition of Excellence Drew Santa Monica Schools Chief

Neil C. Schmidt, 51, new superintendent of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

Claim to fame: Schmidt took the helm of the 9,500-student school district in July upon the retirement of Eugene Tucker. Schmidt had been superintendent of the Lodi Unified School District in the San Joaquin Valley. An advocate of the concept that school achievement is dependent on a supportive home environment, he established a family literacy program at several elementary schools. He has testified before state legislative committees on the need for schools to become the community contact for a wide range of family services.

Background: Schmidt grew up on a family-owned cattle and grain ranch near King City in Monterey County. He earned a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley and taught elementary school and high school in California and New Jersey. He received a doctorate from UCLA and moved into administration, first as an elementary school principal, then superintendent of successively larger school districts. He and his wife, Julie, have two children.

Interviewer: Times staff writer Bernice Hirabayashi.

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Q I hear you have been spending a lot of time on school campuses.

A I spend maybe 30%, 40% of my time on campus. It varies. I think it sends a very strong message as to what a person values--in this case what happens in the classroom. The second reason is for me to supervise and evaluate principals on the work site to get a good sense of what is taking place. The third reason is that for me it brings very much into focus what a school district is all about. What happens with youth in schools can be a part of all sorts of meetings and discussions, but what actually takes place? A fourth one for me is I enjoy it.

Q What are some of the unique characteristics of Santa Monica schools?

A One is the involvement of community and parents. It goes beyond the rhetoric.

In this community there’s a real strong relationship between what people say they believe in and what they actually do. That’s a very powerful statement that the community and the parents make to staff and to students in how much they value public education.

Q Why do you think this support is so strong?

A For a couple of reasons. One is that they’ve had good schools and they want to see those good schools be maintained; and number two, they understand at a value-system level the importance of involvement. I don’t know if that’s a sophistication or what, but it definitely is different than in most other communities. And it cuts across demographics. Santa Monica and Malibu is a very diverse district.

Another unique characteristic is the quality of the staff. It’s a staff that is very open to looking at itself and improving upon what it already does well.

Q Why does this district attract good staff and education-minded residents?

A Well, it’s been that way for a long time. When I went to UCLA in the ‘70s, this was considered an outstanding school district and . . . it’s still considered one of the best school districts in the state of California. Part of it is its size. A smaller school size lends itself to minimizing bureaucracy. It allows people to get to know one another. It encourages true involvement and participation, not just token participation. It allows for a very responsive situation in that when issues come up they can be dealt with relatively quickly.

It’s also because of the association with the universities. It offers a quality of life on the Westside of L.A. that a lot of people would like to be a part of. It has a student population that has traditionally done well and continues to do well. It has a reputation that the city and the community values education and that reinforces it.

Q What is the effect of the increasing ethnic diversity in the district?

A In some districts diversity is viewed as a problem to be overcome. I think there’s a greater awareness in this district that diversity provides richness to be capitalized on.

Q As in perhaps the case of language immersion programs?

A Yes, absolutely.

Q I’ve heard complaints that schools in poorer sections of Santa Monica aren’t as good as schools in wealthier areas. Is this true?

A Well I don’t know how to respond to that because if you were to take a look at the quality of teaching in the classrooms, both schools offer very good programs.

Now, to broaden that question, I believe strongly in the concept of an educated community. Successful schools tend to be part of a neighborhood where education is viewed as important. Not just in the classroom but out in the community where the churches are working with the schools, the city is, that the homes provide rich and varied learning opportunities for children. I think it’s important to ask the question, “What are the educational experiences children are having outside of school?” Do the children who attend different schools have similar types of educational experiences? The answer is no.

So the next question is, “If they vary significantly, how do we address that?” How do we reach out to children and work with the family and community agencies to enrich a child’s educational experience so that all children have rich learning experiences. And that’s a policy question that our society really hasn’t fully addressed.

Q Has the district made plans to reach out into the community? Isn’t that a part of the restructuring movement?

A Yes, it is. But first of all this district has a tradition of that. I’ve worked in some districts where it’s like you’re starting from ground zero on raising those issues. Here there’s already an acknowledgment that that’s not only important, we need to do it, and there’s already many examples.

One example is the child care that this community supports. We’ve had preschool programs and infant programs. We have one of the strongest preschool child-care programs in the state by far. But we just need to do much more.

I believe that every family, every infant, every child, should have certain kinds of opportunities and that the school district needs to be a hub. We need to work with hospitals and other agencies in providing care and education, providing toddler and preschool programs.

Q Whose job is it to put all that together?

A If we’re going to be held accountable, which I think schools should be, that when a youngster leaves high school they should be literate, responsible, an active participant in community affairs, strong citizenship, able to adapt and respond to changing circumstances--whether it’s job, school, a company goes out of business or a whole job market just goes down the tubes--if we’re going to be held responsible for that, given what we know of what happens in the first five years of a child’s life, then we need to be part of a community effort in providing a rich learning environment for all children before the age of 5. Because by the time we have kindergartners come to us many of their attitudes and values have already formed.

Q But isn’t the district only responsible for educating kids from kindergarten to 12th grade?

A I would have said that 10 years ago. I’m unable to say that anymore because we know now that so much happens between zero and 5 in terms of the child’s intellectual, moral and social development. That doesn’t mean we have to take the lead role, but we need to be an active partner in that.

Q Let’s talk about education reform. What is a brief definition of restructuring?

A I probably look at it differently than most. I don’t think we just need to take what we’re currently doing and tinker with it. I think we need to really rethink and almost reinvent our practices, especially at the high school level.

Q Why high school?

A For example, the number two killer of adolescents is suicide. Many youths feel alienated from their schools and their community and their family, and yet the way we organize high school seems not to address that concern. High schools can be very impersonal, students go from teacher to teacher to teacher. What I think we’ve found out over a long period of time is that even though they’re adolescents, many students would benefit from having a teacher for more than one subject. That’s kind of different.

Q How far along is the restructuring process in Santa Monica and how far do you plan to take it?

A That’s a decision that will be arrived at jointly with staff, parents, community members and board members. I think there’s been a lot of uneasiness over the last two years at Santa Monica High School. Some of the staff felt this was something that’s being foisted upon them and that it’s very faddish. I think what the board and the administration and the staff decided to do is to say maybe we need to take a different look at how we’re going about this and the staff has to be more meaningfully involved.

Q How has Principal Nardy Samuel’s imminent departure affected the restructuring movement at the high school?

A It needs to have a life and vitality of its own and it doesn’t depend on any one person. I believe, and Nardy believes, that there’s a momentum that will carry through this process because it’s something that is felt strongly about.

Q So it’s not like the anti-restructuring camp has won a round with his departure?

A I may be naive in this, but I haven’t sensed that at all. My hunch is that there are probably very few teachers who do not acknowledge that we always need to look at our practices and to improve upon what we’re doing. I can’t think of more than a few teachers that wouldn’t take that view. But we have to be real careful as we go through restructuring that we don’t do it in such a way that it alienates people.

Q One of the tenets of restructuring is to give more control to local schools. Is Santa Monica High School going to play a large part in selecting a new principal?

A Yes. They’ll be an integral part of the interview teams. They will have a very strong say in defining the characteristics and the attributes and skills that they would hope that the person would have.

Q But who makes the final decision?

A It’s probably a superintendent’s responsibility to make that recommendation to the board to say this is the person that I feel is best suited for that.

Q What do they want?

A They are pretty basic kinds of things: someone who is a good listener; someone who can build upon a tradition; someone who has high expectations; someone who has a lot of energy and enthusiasm; someone who really enjoys working and being around people; someone who can make the hard decisions when they’re called for; someone who’s well-organized; but above all else is someone who really works well with different points of view and is able to find that common ingredient that people can build from that point.

Q There are two particularly controversial uses of ES money (a $75-million capital improvements bond): Ocean Park and Malibu High School. About Ocean Park, a lot of people thought ES money was supposed to be used for rehabilitating buildings, not for building new ones. The K-6 elementary school planned for Los Amigos Park will cost $7.4 million to build. How do you justify this?

A The ballot measure does provide the legal latitude to do that. So I’m satisfied at that end. Whether or not the district did a sufficient job of explaining that, I hear different points of view.

Now the practical question to me is, “Does it make good sense both fiscally and educationally for kids?” To both points it’s real clear to me that it makes enough sense. You could invest $6 million into upgrading Muir school and SMASH school and they would end up being OK schools. By that I mean you could at least bring them up to minimum code. So you would end up with two schools that would be fairly adequate (but) that in 20 years you’d have to put in major dollars. Or you could put in a million dollars more and end up with a school that will last for 50, 60, 70 years. Fiscally it makes more sense to spend a million dollars more to have a brand new school that will last longer, and that will provide a better educational program.

Also, Muir is located on a very busy street, which is not an ideal situation for a school. It presents supervision and safety problems.

Q About Malibu High School, a lot of people feel the district cannot afford to maintain another high school. What do you say?

A I hear some concerns and complaints about it, but not a lot of discussion. Where I’ve spent most of my time is helping people think through how we can, in the most cost-effective way, build a good program at Malibu High, keeping in mind the board parameters that were decided upon when they gave the go ahead.

Q What were those parameters?

A That there would need to be a significant amount of local fund-raising efforts, that it would need to have a strong academic emphasis, that (there) would not be an overemphasis on the athletic program, and that it would not become a large high school. And that there would be diversity.

I believe that staff and parents out there have worked very hard to address those issues and for most part have been very successful.

Q Is the high school incurring additional costs?

A Not really. If anything, additional students have come back to the district and that brings in additional dollars. For example, we’ve hired a vice principal out there, but that would come out of the budget that would be generated by having new students.

I know some people in the community don’t believe that. I don’t know what I can do differently other than say, let’s sit down and go through the numbers.

Q Another criticism is that it’s unrealistic to open a high school with such a limited student body and resources and expect it to succeed. How do you respond to that?

A The size of the school eventually will be about 600-700 max. That’s not a bad size. Remember we were talking earlier about alienation? Most high schools are too large. I think the ideal size is somewhere between 800 and 1,500. So, to me, they would be just at the very minimum of how small a high school should be.

Q What will it take to make Malibu High a successful institution?

A Well I think they’ve got off to a nice start. It’s been rocky at times, and it’s going to require a lot of effort by the students and staff and parents out there in raising additional funds. It’s going to require patience and openness on the part of people here in Santa Monica who have real strong feelings about this.

If I need to be successful in one area it would be to have people continue to work together to be supportive, to be questioning, to be demanding, plus to continue to work together to find a common ground. That sends a real powerful message to the students too, when they see people who are honestly and openly different but still find a way to move forward. That to me is the real strength of this community.