Matter of Principal : LAUSD liberalizes its policy on selecting schools’ top administrators

Rules are vital to protecting the integrity of a school district’s hiring and promotion system, but there are times when the regulations must bend to accommodate change.

Blind conformity to rules long has seemed almost genetically encoded in the Los Angeles Unified School District. One policy demanded that any candidate to head a school pass an administrative examination. The only exception, under a Board of Education rule, permitted the district superintendent personally to select a school’s leader. Indeed, that’s how Sid Thompson, the LAUSD superintendent, became a principal.

A sign of flexibility appeared recently at the Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks, where parents and teachers persuaded the LAUSD to install longtime assistant Norm Isaacs as principal.

Clearly there is growing reason to bend the rule for appointing principals. Southern California school districts from Orange County to Ventura are moving forward with charter schools and site-based management programs. But how can districts sell parents and teachers on such programs if they insist on playing absolute chieftain over principal selection? And how can homage to the exam requirement be demanded in Los Angeles when budget cuts have delayed the next test until 1997?

Thus it made perfect sense for the Los Angeles school board to vote unanimously last week--after months of frustrating debate--to give LAUSD reform schools more latitude in selecting their top administrators. Now, these schools can hire principals from among educators who have not yet taken the exam.

This shift does not represent a dismantling of the district’s merit system. Faculty and parents must present a detailed and persuasive argument on how a candidate would improve a school.

Already the revision has allowed another longtime assistant principal, Manny Rangell, to take charge of his campus, Sun Valley Middle School.

The new policy is right for the times. The change never should have taken this long to happen.