The New Bosses

DISTRICT A

Schools: 68 Students: 68,266

% Credentialed teachers*: 68.5

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 51.8

Deborah L. Leidner

A Los Angeles Unified School District administrator for 20 years, Deborah L. Leidner has spent the last six years as head of the school cluster in Van Nuys and Reseda, which has experienced gains in standardized test scores and student attendance during her tenure.

Leidner said her first goal is to determine the individual needs of the diverse schools in her subdistrict, which range from the highly regarded El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills to the severely overcrowded Monroe High School in North Hills.

“I have to look at each school to determine how to improve student achievement,” said Leidner, 54, of Granada Hills.

She began her education career in 1971 as a social studies and journalism teacher at Hale Middle School in Woodland Hills and went on to become principal of Maclay Middle School in Pacoima and Marshall High School in Los Feliz.

Leidner earned a doctorate in educational administration from Brigham Young University in 1981.

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DISTRICT B

Schools: 69 Students: 77,045

% Credentialed teachers*: 63.1

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 78.5

Judy Ivie Burton

Judy Ivie Burton began building her reputation as a reformer in 1971, her first year as a teacher, by starting evening English classes for parents at Hyde Park Boulevard Elementary School in Hyde Park.

Burton, 52, moved quickly through the L.A. Unified ranks, working in several administrative positions, including bilingual education advisor in East Los Angeles.

For the last seven years, she has been an assistant superintendent in the school reform office that initiated programs such as school-based management, charter schools and the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now (LEARN).

“We need to collaborate with parents to make our district a success,” said Burton, whose area includes overcrowded and poor areas in the east San Fernando Valley.

A frequent speaker on urban education reform, Burton received a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from UCLA.

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DISTRICT C

Schools: 72 Students: 67,849

% Credentialed teachers*: 66.3

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 62.4

Robert J. Collins

As an L.A. Unified assistant superintendent for the last year, Robert J. Collins worked with the teachers union to increase beginning teacher salaries and forged a compromise between traditional math instructors and those favoring reform methods.

With a specialty in curriculum and instruction, Collins, 54, of Chatsworth, also helped develop the standards-based promotion policy, implement testing programs and replenish a depleted textbook supply.

A UCLA graduate, he said one of his first goals is to tame L.A. Unified breakup efforts seething in his area, which is roughly bisected by Ventura Boulevard. “I want to restore confidence in public education” by increasing student achievement in reading and math, Collins said.

As principal at Grant High School, he received the 1989 California Principal of the Year award.

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DISTRICT D

Schools: 76 Students: 57,048

% Credentialed teachers*: 74.5

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 48.4

Merle E. Price

Merle E. Price won’t have to move far to start his new job.

He already oversees the Westside region that will fall under his umbrella as superintendent of District D.

He spent the last year in charge of the cluster of schools from West Los Angeles to Pacific Palisades.

Price, 52, gained recognition for his instrumental role in launching a complex of charter schools in Pacific Palisades, where he served as principal of Palisades High.

He said charter schools could be part of the formula in his new subdistrict, but he stressed the importance of evaluating the needs of campuses.

“Most important is getting the whole school community focused on specific goals for student achievement,” he said. “The key element is providing the resources to the school and the training to the teachers.”

The 31-year L.A. Unified veteran and Pacific Palisades resident began his career as a science teacher at Fremont High in South-Central. He also served as assistant principal at Locke High in South-Central and Jefferson High southeast of downtown.

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DISTRICT E

Schools: 62 Students: 68,655

% Credentialed teachers*: 64.8

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 79.5

Liliam Castillo

For three years, Deputy Supt. Liliam Castillo presided over a vast educational empire as L.A. Unified’s director of instruction. She oversaw instruction for 711,000 students.

Her new role will be a more limited one, managing schools that stretch from Mid-City and Hollywood to Eagle Rock.

The 25-year district veteran said she is excited at the prospect of turning the policies she once crafted into practices.

“I’m ecstatic about this opportunity,” said Castillo, 46, of Pasadena. “My experience in the central office has given me a new understanding of how this district works.”

First on Castillo’s list is improving instruction. She plans to sit down with principals, parents and others to discuss the performance of their schools and effective practices that can be duplicated.

Castillo, a graduate of USC, has spent her entire career in Los Angeles. She began as a middle school teacher on the Eastside. She served as an assistant principal at Nimitz Middle School in Huntington Park and Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, and as principal of Griffith Junior High in East Los Angeles.

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DISTRICT F

Schools: 57 Students: 60,641

% Credentialed teachers*: 67.1

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 79.4

Richard Alonzo

Richard Alonzo faces one of L.A. Unified’s most daunting challenges: He must find new classroom seats for schools that are among the most crowded and impoverished in Los Angeles.

“Getting that critically needed space is the No. 1 priority,” said Alonzo, 52. “If we can’t identify land, then we can look at space we now have--using other district property for schools or rebuilding campuses to accommodate larger numbers of students.”

Alonzo is familiar with the issue. He is the cluster administrator in the northeast San Fernando Valley, one of the most densely populated areas in the school district.

A resident of Los Angeles and a graduate of Immaculate Heart College, Alonzo said he also will focus on improving test scores. Schools in his subdistrict have high percentages of students who speak limited English and rely on subsidized lunches, both factors associated with low performance.

The 30-year educator has spent the last two decades in L.A. Unified, working as an art teacher, a bilingual coordinator, an assistant principal and a principal.

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DISTRICT G

Schools: 55 Students: 60,253

% Credentialed teachers*: 58.5

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 84.9

Renee E. Jackson

Renee E. Jackson will move from her current job as assistant superintendent overseeing instruction at 265 campuses to heading a sprawling region embracing the heart of the city’s low-income Latino and black neighborhoods in southwest Los Angeles.

“My district has outstanding student and staff attendance,” Jackson said. “But 40% of its teachers are not fully credentialed, and the Academic Performance Index of its schools is no higher than 2.”

Jackson, a graduate of Western Kentucky University, has been employed by L.A. Unified since 1971, working as an administrator, advisor, coordinator and teacher. The Culver City resident has served as president of the Council of Black Administrators since 1998.

Joe Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, last year worked with Jackson to help calm racial tensions at Hamilton High School on the Westside.

“She’s smart, has the moxie to get what her area needs, and she can work fairly within the delicate black/brown political tensions there,” Hicks said.

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DISTRICT H

Schools: 55 Students: 68,302

% Credentialed teachers*: 61.9

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 89.8

Bonnie Rubio

Bonnie Rubio calls her new assignment “going home,” because she grew up in the region she will now oversee, and was a graduate of Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

As administrator of L.A. Unified’s Jefferson cluster, Rubio, 56, has focused on improving academic performance in a low-achieving area. She faces the same task on a bigger scale as she takes over the subdistrict, which includes Eastside and South-Central neighborhoods.

Success, she said, pivots on having well-qualified teachers. Where large numbers of students speak Spanish, teacher support and training are especially important, she said.

Rubio, a Whittier resident, graduated from Cal State L.A. and started working for L.A. Unified in 1965. She gained most recognition as principal of Eastman Avenue School in East Los Angeles, where she launched a bilingual program that moved children into English-speaking classrooms by the fourth grade, and was praised for improving test scores.

Rubio has run into controversy as overcrowding has forced the district to convert schools to year-round schedules but says her style is generally collaborative. “I don’t plow over people, I work with them,” she said.

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DISTRICT I

Schools: 44 Students: 51,905

% Credentialed teachers*: 53.4

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 85.9

George J. McKenna III

George J. McKenna III, a Compton Unified School District deputy superintendent, seems to have attracted as much renown as is possible for a career school administrator.

A math teacher who became the tough, charismatic principal of L.A. Unified’s George Washington Preparatory High School in the Athens area, McKenna gained national acclaim by boosting standards and reducing absenteeism there.

“Daring and dedicated” is how Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas describes him. McKenna’s resume chronicles a lengthy history of civic activism and honors. There was even a television movie made about his life.

Yet a career on the front lines of urban education was unlikely to remain a fairy tale, and controversy dogged McKenna after his tenure at Washington.

As superintendent of the Inglewood Unified School District until 1994, he clashed with the school board and teachers union. Board members called him arrogant and blamed him for deficits. But it was the board that approved pay hikes against McKenna’s advice. He left after a no-confidence vote.

McKenna, 59, is a graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans and lives in the Crenshaw district.

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DISTRICT J

Schools: 38 Students: 61,933

% Credentialed teachers*: 61.5

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 88.4

Dale Vigil

Dale Vigil is a specialist in academic performance standards who comes to Los Angeles fresh from a tumultuous term as head of the Santa Rosa, Calif., schools.

As that district’s first Latino superintendent, Vigil, 56, was called soft-spoken, patient and well-liked by teachers. News accounts credit him with developing rigorous standards.

But despite his reputation as a consensus builder, troubles with the school board began early. There were disagreements over direction, said board President Bill Carle, “but nothing that I think was out of the ordinary.” Vigil resigned after two years.

He now says he thinks his talents are more suited to diverse urban schools than to Santa Rosa’s more rural setting. Independently, Carle echoed the thought. “Dale was someone who needed to be in an urban environment,” he said.

Vigil is a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado, and a former Spanish teacher and assistant superintendent in the San Diego city schools.

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DISTRICT K

Schools: 70 Students: 66,857

% Credentialed teachers*: 69.9

% Free/reduced-price lunches**: 65.3

Richard A. Vladovic

A 31-year veteran of L.A. Unified, Richard A. Vladovic, an assistant superintendent of instruction, will oversee a diverse region peppered with distinct Asian, white, African American and Latino communities.

“All of these communities--from Gardena to San Pedro--have their own identities and aspirations,” said Vladovic, 55, who grew up and still lives in the ethnically mixed wharf-side community of San Pedro.

“I see my role as constantly assessing progress and changing our practices based upon what the data tells us,” said Vladovic, who graduated from Cal State Long Beach.

“I have complete confidence in Richard,” said Board of Education member Mike Lansing, who reprehsents District K communities. “Having risen through the ranks, he’s got a lot of experience. But he’s not a clone of headquarters thinking.”

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* Percentage of teachers with full credentials who have successfully completed two years of teaching.

** Percentage of students who are eligible, because of low family income, for free or reduced-price lunches.

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Subdistrict Boundaries

This map shows the boundaries of the 11 subdistricts created in the reorganization of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Each will be headed by a superintendent responsible for overseeing its budget and curriculum. The reorganization takes effect July 1. Although the boundaries were meant to create roughly equal districts, there are significant variations. The subdistricts range in size from 38 to 76 schools, with the smaller districts being those facing the greatest socioeconomic disadvantages.

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Source: Los Angeles Unified School District

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Compiled by MALOY MOORE / Los Angeles Times