Interim Superintendent Given 2-Year Contract

Los Angeles school district Supt. Sid Thompson was handed a two-year contract by the Board of Education Thursday to undertake what many view as an impossible task: to lead the battered school district through the most rigorous reform movement in its history.

After a daylong, closed-door meeting, all seven board members gathered to announce their 6-0 vote, with one abstention, awarding the veteran district administrator the $140,000-a-year post. He has actively sought the job since last fall, when he was named interim superintendent following the resignation of Bill Anton. His contract was due to expire June 30.

Thompson, 61, pledged that his commitment lies with “the young people, because they are who we are all about.” After a loud round of applause from staff and many parents who gathered for the announcement, he said that his top priorities will be raising student achievement and making the central bureaucracy more efficient.

To do this, he vowed to fully implement the LEARN reform plan to bring more decision-making power to school sites. And he said he intends to use the recommendations in a recent management audit, which sharply criticized inefficient district operations, to clean house at district headquarters.

“It’s going to be very difficult for this system, but we believe it will be good for this system,” said Thompson, who over 37 years ascended from classroom teacher to chief of the nation’s second-largest school district. Thompson’s contract will end in July, 1995.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who saw Thompson close-up during weeks of intense negotiations over the teachers’ contract, praised him as “a talented, sensitive man who understands human relations as well as anyone I have ever seen--and he is literally in an impossible situation.”

Brown, in an interview earlier this week, said Thompson has been handicapped by board members who meddle in his decisions. “The school board ought to make the policy and get the hell out of the way,” he said.

School board President Leticia Quezada said the final board decision on the appointment was delayed because of an investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office into a contractor that worked for the district and a lawsuit brought by a district employee who supervised the contractor.

The contractor, The Institute for Successful Living Inc., was the subject of a California attorney general investigation last year. It ran an independent studies program that allegedly duped the district out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by charging the district for students who were not enrolled and instructors who did not exist.

In April, employee Donald Martin sued the district, claiming he was unfairly demoted for being a whistle-blower on the contractor. Former Supt. Anton, the school board, then-Deputy Supt. Thompson and administrator Barry L. Mostovoy were named in the suit.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Flanagan declined Thursday to comment on the inquiry, saying only that it has been going on for several months.

Quezada said the board hired an outside attorney who assured it that “no allegations or investigation is directed at any employee of this district. The board is comfortable there is not a cloud of allegations directed at Sid Thompson.” Thompson said he is confident that there was no wrongdoing on his part or others’.

School board member Julie Korenstein, who represents much of the San Fernando Valley, abstained from the vote, citing her concern over the investigations and lawsuit.

Korenstein credited Thompson with shepherding the district through a tumultuous year of labor strife and financial strain, but said the continuing investigation prevented her from joining the rest of the board in ratifying Thompson’s contract.

“In this most difficult of all years, the superintendent has done an outstanding job. . . . I applaud him for his efforts,” Korenstein said. But because the state and federal inquiries as well as the internal investigation launched by the board a week ago are not complete, “I just was not ready to take the vote today,” she said.

Korenstein denied that she withheld her approval because of ill feelings between Thompson and United Teachers--Los Angeles, a key source of political support for Korenstein. She said the internal investigation should be completed in a month or two, which “will hopefully satisfy my ability to say yea or nay.”

But fellow board member Mark Slavkin, who also represents part of the Valley, pronounced himself satisfied with Thompson’s integrity, saying that none of the investigations “put compelling evidence on the table to suggest any impropriety of the superintendent or raise any question as to his integrity.”

“The issue is comparing someone like Sid, whom I’ve worked with for four years . . . against some fourth- and fifth-hand innuendo,” Slavkin said. “To allow innuendo and rumor to delay (the appointment) is just unfair and inappropriate.”

Quezada said that the board opted against a national search because stability in the district was needed. A series of crises, including the bitter negotiations over the teachers’ contract, would have made recruiting difficult.

The challenge facing Thompson is enormous and his success will likely turn on whether school board members and the district’s influential employee unions will empower him to take aggressive action to restructure the district.

“This is nearly an impossible task and he certainly can’t do it right away,” said school board member Barbara Boudreaux, a staunch Thompson supporter. “Now the board members have to back off the micro-managing and let the superintendent run the district.”

Some question whether Thompson, as a long-time district insider, will be able to make tough management decisions that may hurt colleagues.

“On a personal level, I think he’s a very decent human being who cares about kids,” said United Teacher-Los Angeles President Helen Bernstein. “The question is, can he exhibit the kind of leadership needed to set this system right. There are overwhelming problems here and you need an incredibly strong leader who’ll come in and clean house.”

Times staff writers Henry Chu and Sandy Banks contributed to this article.