Romer Names Bilingual Expert as His Deputy
Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer on Thursday named the superintendent of the Little Lake City School District in Santa Fe Springs to be his only deputy.
Maria Gutierrez Ott, a former bilingual specialist for the Los Angeles schools, will be in charge of instruction for the 711,000-student district and will report directly to Romer.
The appointment completes the remake of the district’s top administrative structure. Ott will be one of seven top administrators directly under Romer, but as head of instruction she will rank as the second in command, a spokeswoman for Romer said.
Ott will receive $170,000 in her new position.
Romer, the former governor of Colorado, does not have a background in education. During the search for a new superintendent last spring, district officials said that if the board chose someone without a background in education, that the top instructional job would be the No. 2 position.
Ott, 52, was a principal at Hart Street School in Canoga Park and later at Sheridan Street School on the Eastside before transferring to the office of instruction. When she left the district in 1993, she was an administrator of elementary instruction specializing in language acquisition and bilingual development.
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