Lacking a Leader, Simi Schools Seen as Adrift

A school district without a strong and experienced superintendent is like a ship without a captain, many veteran educators say. The crew can go for weeks, even months, mopping the decks, hoisting the sails and pumping out the bilges.

But without a long-term leader to make sure all the work gets done, the boat inevitably will run off course, they say.

“Eventually, it would fall apart,” said Becky Wetzel, director of curriculum for Simi Valley Unified School District. “The board would begin to circumvent staff and go to the principal on their own. You’d get all these ministates.”

Shelley Barta, who directs the district’s fiscal services department, agrees: “Without a superintendent, you’re just stamping out fires. Day-to-day things get signed, sure, but you’re not being proactive.”

That’s what people are worrying about at Simi Valley, which recently lost its seventh superintendent in just more than seven years.

The effects of such turnover, experts say, include damage to employee morale, an inability to carry out long-term plans and harm to the district’s reputation that can make recruiting a good superintendent increasingly difficult.

Superintendent turnover does not result from one event, these professionals say. It is a deeper, far-reaching syndrome. Instability at the top often results when board members can’t agree--and that, in turn, may reflect a divided community.

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When Dan Flynn resigned earlier this month, he became another statistic in the history of Simi Valley’s beleaguered school district.

After being handpicked by the board president, hired on a bitterly divided vote in October and serving just more than three months on the job, Flynn said he “reluctantly surrendered” to board pressure.

Two board members, Diane Collins and Carla Kurachi, openly declared their mistrust of him, saying they believed Flynn planned to hire a new curriculum director with a conservative political agenda. They voted last fall against hiring him and recently to accept his resignation.

Trustees Norm Walker and Caesar Julian, who were among the majority that voted to hire the superintendent, opposed releasing Flynn, 45, from his $96,000 annual contract, arguing that he was beginning to show great potential in bonding with the community.

Trustee Janice DiFatta, who supported Flynn’s appointment last fall, has declined to comment on why she became the deciding vote in accepting his resignation. But Collins and Kurachi say DiFatta turned on Flynn after she concluded that he planned to reorganize the district without discussing matters with the board.

It was the latest in a long series of changes at the top that began with the retirement in 1990 of 16-year veteran John Duncan. Flynn was the seventh schools chief, including permanent and interim administrators, since.

That kind of turnover is unusual, experts say. Statewide, superintendents stay an average of two or three years, according to the Assn. of California School Administrators. In Ventura County, the normal stay is about five or six years.

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Having a superintendent is considered so important, it is law.

In the early 1900s, California made it illegal to run a school district without a professional leader.

That is why Kathy Scroggin, Simi Valley’s assistant superintendent of educational services, is filling in as schools chief for a month until trustees hire an interim superintendent.

The board sets policy, and the superintendent must carry out those plans.

And “that’s hard to do with so much turnover,” said Bill Seaver, a former superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Weak leadership most often means lack of vision, Seaver said. If that power vacuum is left gaping too long, a school district could face devastating effects, such as an out-of-balance budget or classrooms without proper textbooks.

“A superintendent makes it happen,” said Charles Weis, county superintendent of schools. “They garner the resources. They don’t teach the kids, but they do bring in the right people to do that. When there is no superintendent, people don’t know who to listen to.”

The situation can be even worse with three strong assistant superintendents, Weis said. Each of those administrators has an agenda: Educational services wants books. The personnel department needs to hire more teachers. Business services says there is no money.

“But the superintendent can see the entire operation,” Weis said, “and then use his or her own wisdom based on years of experience to see the overall picture.”

Constant turnover is likely to stall projects and ideas, said school governance expert Michael Kirst of Stanford University.

“New policies require steady work,” he said. “And you don’t just change schools in one year. With turnover, there’s no policy coherence and things tend to zig and zag. All you get are a bunch of one-shot gimmicks.”

To judge whether turnover and board infighting have taken their toll on a school district, Kirst said, a key question must be asked: Were past agenda items carried through?

According to Dave Kanthak, Simi Valley’s former assistant superintendent of business services, many plans were thwarted over the years for a “variety of political reasons.”

In one instance, he said, it took a span of four superintendents to shorten a lease agreement with Grace Brethren Schools, which has been renting the district’s former Arcane Elementary School, in the hopes of getting that school back for future district students.

One strong leader might have sat down with the board and worked out a lease agreement quickly, said Kanthak, who left the district last week for a job in Riverside County.

High turnover at the top also can hurt employee morale, said Larry Iannaccone, a retired UC Santa Barbara professor who studied school board conflicts and superintendent turnover.

Mary Riggs, an English teacher at Royal High School, agreed.

“It’s hard to work without direction,” she said. “When Bob Purvis was here [as superintendent], he’d come over and say personal words to you, so you’d know you were headed in the right direction. Now you just don’t know.”

“This has been very disruptive to our district,” agreed Cheryl Flynn, a bus driver who is president of the nonteaching employees union. She is not related to Dan Flynn. “Everything is back upside-down again.”

Simi Valley’s short-term superintendent situation is probably a result of its contentious school board, experts say.

There is a deep rift between conservative and liberal factions. Arguments over Medi-Cal reimbursements for special-education programs, phonics-based curriculum and dissemination of birth-control information often dominate Simi Valley school board meetings.

This ideological divide mirrors divisions in the community, said Kirst of Stanford.

While disagreements and split votes may be examples of democracy at work, they certainly don’t make for easy policymaking.

“A board that does not congeal, that has deep factions, won’t work well together, and you need that to set policies,” Kirst said.

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For all the turmoil, Simi Valley has kept its budgets balanced and its test scores above national averages.

It has been spared the humiliation suffered by, for example, the Sacramento City Unified School District, where the mayor in April 1996 threatened to step in and take control away from bickering trustees.

Simi Valley has been saved from that dramatic fate mainly because of excellent employees at the lower levels, according to district and county administrators.

“In spite of what has happened, or not happened . . . good things continue to happen for the kids, because of the outstanding staff there,” said Albert “Bud” Marley, a 19-year schools chief veteran who came out of retirement to help Simi Valley schools last year.

But to heal, Simi Valley schools must hire a strong new leader. And that could be difficult because constant turnover has earned the district an unenviable image, many say.

“The board has to send clear symbols that they’ve changed before they hire someone and before someone will want to work for them,” said county schools chief Weis.

Although the district has a poor reputation, Weis said, it may attract a good leader because of its size and superintendent pay of about $100,000. And most superintendents have big enough egos to believe they can change the dynamics of a dysfunctional board, he said.

A good leader can make quick improvements, said Simi Valley teachers’ union President Ginny Jannotto.

Longtime administrator Marley, who stepped in last summer to fill a void left by another ousted superintendent, began to turn things around almost overnight, she said.

“I think what the school board did was gutsy,” she said. “You do what you have to do to save a $150-million enterprise with 20,000 kids.”

The more difficult question is how to solve the underlying board conflict. There is no easy answer, the experts agree, but somehow, compromise has to be found.

“With extreme polarization and ideological differences, you have to learn to give and take to be effective,” said Marley, a former Las Virgenes and Ojai superintendent.

And the solution lies beyond the school board, said education professor Iannaccone.

“It’s the entire community that will have to iron out their differences,” he said. “Extreme positions are being held. . . . The fight will have to hurt enough for things to change.”

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Turmoil at the Top

Five superintendents and two interim superintendents have led Simi Valley Unified School District since 1990:

September 1974 to December 1990: John Duncan. Left for another job.

December 1990 to June 1993: Robert Purvis. Retired.

July 1993 to June 1996: Mary Beth Wolford. Retired six months earlier than planned, citing difficulty working with board members.

July to December 1996: Robert Purvis. Returned as interim superintendent.

January to June 1997: Tate Parker. After being placed on administrative leave, he received $81,000 in a termination agreement.

July to October 1997: Albert “Bud” Marley. Came out of retirement to lead Simi Valley temporarily.

October 1997 to February 1998: Dan Flynn. Resigned under pressure from the board, which will pay his $8,000 monthly salary for four months.