Newport-Mesa District Has 2 Finalists for Top Job : Education: The candidates are an Arkansas superintendent and a Long Beach administrator. The school board may fill the post as early as Tuesday.

The two finalists for the top job in the troubled Newport-Mesa Unified School District are the superintendent of the Little Rock, Ark., school district and a top administrator in the Long Beach Unified School District, The Times has learned.

Cloyde McKinley (Mac) Bernd, 49, who left his post heading the San Marcos Unified School District in northern San Diego County only a year ago, has struggled in Arkansas with federal court control of the school system because of a desegregation ruling and his controversial firing of a high school principal over alleged sexual and financial misconduct.

Jerry C. Gross, 53, one of five area superintendents in Long Beach, has previously run that district’s special education program and served as its legislative representative in Sacramento.

Newport-Mesa school board members, who have refused to identify their finalists, spent Friday interviewing former colleagues of Bernd’s in San Marcos, sources said. On Wednesday, board members interviewed people about Gross in a rented suite at the Sheraton Towers in Long Beach.

If they remain interested in Bernd after their research in San Marcos, five of the seven board members will travel to Little Rock next week to continue the selection process.

Board members said they expect to choose a new superintendent as early as Tuesday for the district, which is reeling from last fall’s discovery that top financial officer Stephen A. Wagner embezzled $4 million in school funds. Board Chairman Roderick H. MacMilliansaid that while board members are focusing on two finalists, two other candidates have not yet been dismissed from consideration in case further research disqualifies one of the finalists.

An interview committee of 50 parents, teachers, students and community leaders originally considered 63 applicants to replace John Nicoll, the 21-year veteran superintendent who retired because of ill health in December amid the embezzlement scandal.

Newport-Mesa spans Newport Beach and Costa Mesa. About 17,500 students attend the district’s 23 schools.

A motorcycle lover who rides a Harley-Davidson, Bernd grew up in Colorado and has degrees from the University of Colorado, the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Florida. He was recruited for the Newport-Mesa post.

Bernd began his career as a social studies teacher and coach of football, wrestling and track in a Colorado high school and worked in Florida and Arizona before landing the San Marcos superintendency in 1986.

In San Marcos, a district of 10 schools, 10,000 students and a budget of about $40 million, Bernd won accolades for helping raise the district’s standardized test scores. When he left for the Little Rock district--which has 26,000 students in 53 schools and a $140-million budget--last spring, Bernd said he was fed up with California’s public school system because the state’s funding cuts left superintendents “in the position of rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic.”

A year in Little Rock, where there have been seven superintendents in the past 11 years, made him long for California, Bernd said Friday.

“I left to find out what the rest of the world was like. . . . I love Southern California and I belong there,” he said in a telephone interview from Little Rock. “What I’m beginning to see is that public education in this country, in a lot of places, is in trouble. California is certainly not unique in that regard. Being away for a year has given me a chance to reflect on a lot of things that are good about education in California.”

One of Bernd’s biggest challenges in the past year was dealing with allegations that one of his principals sexually assaulted a student and mishandled school funds. Bernd suspended and then moved to fire the man, decisions that are being appealed. A Little Rock church later refused to handle Bernd’s wedding because of the flap.

Bernd has also had trouble dealing with the federal court’s role in governing the Little Rock district, where his salary is $110,000.

“We’ve had some unique problems here in Little Rock, (the court is) running the district and that doesn’t allow (Bernd) the freedom and flexibility most superintendents have,” said John Moore, president of the Little Rock school board. “That’s been frustrating to him.”

Gross, 53, has degrees from Michigan State University, the University of Arizona and Southern Illinois University. He started as a special education teacher in Torrance, and has worked in Arizona, Illinois and Minnesota.

An avid golfer, Gross lives in Alamitos Heights and belongs to the Virginia Country Club in northwest Long Beach. As area superintendent, a post he has held since 1989, Gross oversees 13 elementary schools, three middle schools and one high school in the southeast section of Long Beach, including the peninsula, Naples, Belmont Shore, Belmont Heights and the Bixby Park area.

Long Beach Supt. Carl Cohn described Gross as “organized, bright, very client-centered, not your traditional educational establishment-type person.”

“He’s a very cool cucumber; he has grace under pressure,” Long Beach school board member Ed Eveland said of Gross. “I’ve never seen him really get upset. I’ve seen him become very determined and resolute . . . but he’s always under control.”