Key School District Reform Leader Quits : Education: William Magee says he was not given the power he needed to make changes. Supt. Sid Thompson says the former Arco executive had unrealistic expectations.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s No. 3 officer, a retired Arco executive hired to overhaul the district’s budget and business operations, resigned Thursday because he could not get the authority he said he needed to get the job done.

William Magee, chosen by business leaders five months ago to help the district’s reform efforts, told The Times he felt frustrated in his efforts to make changes because he lacked the power to make key personnel decisions.

“I didn’t think I could do the job unless I had hiring and firing authority over the people who reported to me,” Magee said. “I felt I had to be perceived as the person with authority as opposed to being a part of the nebulous office of the superintendent.”

Supt. Sid Thompson said Thursday that he wanted Magee to stay on but that the former executive, who is accustomed to working in a private corporation instead of a large public agency, sought an unrealistic amount of control.

“The thing that bothered him the most was that he wanted to really control everything he dealt with,” Thompson said. “First of all, I told him, I am the CEO of this district and I’m ultimately accountable for everything.”

Thompson, however, praised Magee’s contributions and said he is pleased Magee has agreed to stay on as an unpaid consultant in several technical areas. Thompson said he will not seek to fill the vacant position.

The resignation, the culmination of a conflict that had been simmering almost from the start, caused consternation among several key business and education leaders because of Magee’s close ties to the district’s innovative school reform effort known as LEARN.

Magee’s primary assignment was closely related to a central concept of LEARN--to shift budget and other decision-making authority to individual schools that have voted to participate in the program. In particular, he was working on a districtwide computer system to bring financial information to the fingertips of principals.

Robert E. Wycoff, president emeritus of Arco and a founding member of LEARN, said Thursday that he was disappointed by the resignation but not surprised. It was Wycoff who helped broker the deal that brought Magee to the district under a $109,000 annual contract that was to have expired in June, 1995. “To me it’s an indication that (district officials) just don’t realize what is necessary to make schools work,” Wycoff said. “They just want to stay in the old ways and that’s what’s so sad.”

But he predicted that Magee’s resignation will not dampen the business community’s commitment to LEARN, the acronym for Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now.

“The bottom line is we are going to make this work,” Wycoff said. “We are not quitting.”

Mike Roos, chief executive officer of LEARN, said that the resignation “points up the lack of resolve on the part of the district to do the absolutely essential requirements to fully make schools work.”

School board President Mark Slavkin downplayed the significance of the resignation and said he doubted it will undermine business leaders’ support for the school district.

“I think it belittles their commitment to public education to suggest that their support is conditioned on the employment status of any one person,” Slavkin said.

“Any speculation that this has huge meaning for LEARN or the reform effort is a bit overblown,” Slavkin said. “What counts is the outcome we create and we ought to focus on those instead of on the personalities.”

Magee was controller and a vice president of Arco for six years and oversaw all financial, legal and public affairs for the company. His appointment to the district was widely praised by business leaders as a step in the right direction for the district’s tradition-bound bureaucracy.

His tenure provoked private grumblings among district headquarters staff members, who were unaccustomed to his blunt, no-nonsense style. They also complained that Magee did not understand the constraints and rules that apply to public agencies.

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Recently, Magee also drew fire from the district’s Filipino employees when he observed in a letter that many people of Filipino descent held jobs in the accounting department. The issue had been raised in an anonymous letter from another employee. Magee later apologized to Filipino employees.

Summarizing his experience, Magee said Thursday that he generally found a central bureaucracy that was having a difficult time with change. He did say, however, that his work with individual LEARN schools was a refreshing experience and gave him hope that reform can take hold.

“I can point to some beginnings,” Magee said. “And I think I established some credibility with the educational side of the district, the schools. They took me seriously because I was open and honest and I hope I have laid the groundwork for change.”