Capistrano Schools Supt. Among 4 Finalists for Louisville, Ky., Job : Education: James A. Fleming leaves today for interviews. He didn’t apply for the top post there but says he won’t close the door to career options.

Capistrano schools Supt. James A. Fleming, who joined the district in 1991 and was named one of the nation’s top 100 educators earlier this year, is a finalist for a top job in Kentucky.

Fleming, 50, departs today for a two-day interview for the superintendent’s post at 93,000-student Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, the state’s largest school district.

“I haven’t applied for the position,” Fleming said Tuesday. “I have agreed to an interview . . . and to talk to them. I’m not exactly packing my bags to leave Capistrano, but this is a case where I’m not closing options and doors.”

Fleming confided in only a few officials in the Capistrano Unified School District about his interview. The 30,000-student district lured him from Florida’s Dade County Public Schools system in July, 1991, with a four-year contract that started at $117,000 annually.

Although Fleming said he told the school board and top district managers about his talks with Louisville administrators and his trip, many others in the Capistrano school system were surprised.

“I’m totally shocked,” said Sue Stewart of Laguna Niguel, the new president of the district’s parent-teacher organizations. “We can’t lose him, absolutely not. I know many parents who would be very upset. He’s been a wonderful superintendent.”

Fleming is one of four finalists being flown to Louisville for interviews. He will meet with state Board of Education members, the mayor of Louisville, the district’s current and former administrators, and will be the guest of honor at a public reception.

Louisville school officials said they contacted Fleming because of his reputation in Dade County and Capistrano as an outstanding communicator and an advocate of parent-teacher participation in school management.

Fleming wrote his doctoral dissertation at Nova University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on school-based management, where individual schools have advisory boards composed of parents and other local residents.

Kentucky voters recently passed a statewide reform act requiring schools to establish such advisory boards. The act is considered “the most comprehensive and cutting-edge state educational reform in the country,” said Susan Jernigan, a member of an executive search team that approached Fleming about the job.

“Jefferson County Public Schools has an outstanding reputation across the country,” Jernigan said. “Its current superintendent, Dr. Donald Ingwerson, was the national Superintendent of the Year.”

Ingwerson, who held the post for 12 years, is moving to California to work for an educational foundation in Santa Monica, Jernigan said.

Before coming to Capistrano with his wife and family, Fleming spent 27 years as an administrator in the Dade County school system, the nation’s fourth largest with 291,000 students.

Fleming said Capistrano “has probably the best group of elected officials I’ve ever worked for. The teachers are some of the finest I’ve ever seen, and the principals provide excellent leadership.”

But Fleming acknowledged that he has concerns about the future of the California public school system with the school voucher initiative on the November ballot. He says the initiative is “ill-advised.”

“The only cloud over all of us in California is this voucher initiative,” Fleming said. “It would absolutely devastate public education in this state.”

Fleming said the Capistrano schools alone would lose $9 million from its annual budget just to provide the proposed $2,600 voucher to students statewide who are already enrolled in private schools.