Irvine Unified School Superintendent to Resign : Education: David E. Brown’s decision to move to Napa Valley Unified stuns associates. District flourished under him.

David E. Brown, who has overseen some of the county’s best schools for the past seven years as superintendent of the Irvine Unified School District, unexpectedly announced Friday that he will resign his post and leave the district in November.

Brown, 53, said he has accepted the top job at Napa Valley Unified School District.

“This job meets a personal interest I had in getting a different quality of life,” Brown said in an interview Friday. “But I didn’t seek a position. This was a recruitment. I’ve been in Orange and Los Angeles counties for 25 years, and the notion of being in a rural environment has always been an interest of mine.”

Brown leaves a school district widely praised for high test scores and nationally distinguished schools to go to a less well-known district headquartered in Napa with 29 schools and 16,000 students. He said that money is not an issue in the move and that he will be earning roughly the same $105,000 annual salary he receives in Irvine, which has 31 schools and 22,000 students.

Brown is the second superintendent of a high-profile county school district to leave in recent months. In August, Rudy M. Castruita, superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, the county’s largest, departed to take over the top post at the San Diego County Department of Education.

Across Irvine Unified, where classes began Thursday, parents, teachers and school officials were stunned by Brown’s surprise announcement.

“There has been a large degree of shock and disbelief,” said Deputy Supt. Paul Reed, a former teacher in the district and protege of founding superintendent A. Stanley Corey, the only other superintendent the 21-year-old district has had.

“Seven years is a sign of a pretty solid track record,” added Tom Burnham, a trustee since 1992 who was a member of the executive search firm hired by the district to recruit Brown in 1987. “Today, if you have a superintendent for more than four or five years, you’re doing pretty well. It is a loss for the district, but it’s also a chance for reflection and renewal.”

Jacquie Boslet, president of the districtwide Parent Teacher Assn. Council, said, “As a community, I think parents will be disappointed and hurt that he’s leaving, but I think they’ll understand. There will be a lot of thank yous and a lot of praise.”

Brown said he has tentative plans to leave his post by Nov. 1, or soon thereafter. He will continue to serve as superintendent full time until then, he said. The Irvine school board is to begin discussions on a search for a new superintendent at its next regular meeting Sept. 20.

Napa Valley school district officials, who visited Irvine schools this week as part of reviewing Brown’s qualifications, said Brown was selected in the past few days from a field that began with 60 candidates. He will replace former superintendent Jack Gybes, who left the district in August.

Brown “really stood out,” said James L. Teplin, interim superintendent of Napa Valley Unified. “We like his leadership style, his integrity and honesty. We think he’s an outstanding educator. Whomever we contacted in the state, they were complimentary of his management style and his knowledge of good instruction.”

Brown, however, refused to take much credit for the success of the district, where schools and students are accustomed to being at the top of academic accolade lists.

“We continued to improve, but any notion that it was my doing would not be appropriate,” Brown said.

In August, University High School’s Class of 1994 posted scores of more than 200 points above the state and national average on the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college-bound seniors. Eighty percent of the class took the admissions exam, nearly double the participation rate of California and the nation.

All three Irvine Unified high schools have been named National Distinguished Schools, the highest academic accolade a secondary school can earn. District schools routinely place among the county’s top performers on various standardized tests.

While many agree that Irvine Unified’s stellar academic reputation preceded Brown, they said he maintained and enhanced it.

“When you have a community of professional people who value education, you’re bound to have strong support for the schools, said John F. Dean, superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education. “But you take that interest and you combine it with (Brown’s) kind of leadership, and you have a winner.”

Under Corey, the first superintendent, individual Irvine schools had a great degree of autonomy from central decision-making. Although Brown reluctantly increased some centralization of operations to cope with budget shortfalls, teachers and administrators say he preserved the independence of individual schools.

Greg Cops, who has been principal of Woodbridge High School since it opened in 1980, said, “This is not a top-down-type district where the superintendent sets everything in motion. Dave Brown certainly accepted that philosophy.”

Brown said he plans to continue his style of decentralized management in Napa Valley.

Brown, a native of Lennox in Los Angeles County, was superintendent of the San Marino Unified School District in Los Angeles County for seven years. He was previously a high school principal and cross-country coach.