L.A. District Drafts Short List for Chief

As the committee charged with finding a new Los Angeles school superintendent nears its deadline, members of the school board have begun discussing a short list of names, including two big-city superintendents and former U.S. Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros.

Other names include Liam E. McGee, president of Bank of America Southern California, and former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, according to district sources. The superintendents being discussed are Dennis Smith, who heads the Orange County school system in Orlando, Fla., and Houston Supt. Rod Paige.

Houston school trustees last week boosted Paige’s salary to $275,000, which is believed to be the highest in the nation among school chiefs. Trustees awarded the 26% raise after learning that Paige had been contacted by officials in other cities looking for new school chiefs, including Los Angeles.

The search committee is expected to meet May 20 to draft a final list of five names that would go to the board in a private meeting to be held the week of May 22. Until then, sources said, none of the people with whom the committee has met needs to make a decision about whether they truly want the job.

Cisneros, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles-based television network Univision, has met with the search committee to offer them advice, and his name has been actively touted by several influential members of the community. A source familiar with the discussions stressed, however, that while some members of the school board are interested in Cisneros, he is not currently an active candidate for the job.

A former mayor of San Antonio, Cisneros served more than three years as President Clinton’s secretary for Housing and Urban Development. He resigned in 1996 after he was accused of lying to the FBI during a background check about how much he had paid a former mistress. Last September he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI.

Romer, the only candidate who has publicly proclaimed his interest in the position, has been interviewing Los Angeles Board of Education members, principals and teachers across the district. He also has been active organizing this summer’s Democratic presidential nominating convention in Los Angeles, which he chairs.

Another name under consideration is Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester, N.Y., Federation of Teachers, and director of a coalition of progressive labor leaders called the Teacher Union Reform Network.

Day Higuchi, president of the United Teachers-Los Angeles union, said Urbanski told him he was not interested in being a candidate. A call to Urbanski’s home in Rochester was not returned.

Higuchi, a close colleague of Urbanski, said the Rochester union leader had been brought to Los Angeles to give advice on the superintendent selection process. Once here, he was interviewed for the job himself.

The board and the search committee must decide if they want to seek a prominent candidate from outside education circles or an experienced educator. Both options appear to still be under consideration. A third option would be to name a non-educator as superintendent while naming someone with education experience as a chief operating officer.

The board hopes to select a new school chief by June 1, in time to help interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines select the leaders of 11 mini-districts that will be created under a recently approved plan to reorganize the district.

Some board members said that a few potential candidates withdrew their names from consideration when the district decided to go forward with the reorganization plan, which could be completed in July.

Ed Hamilton, executive director of the headhunter firm conducting the nationwide search for a superintendent, declined to discuss details of the search. In an earlier interview he said the committee was on schedule. “The process is working well and the board will have options that will please it,” he said earlier this month.

The superintendent’s job, he said, comes with a salary range of $195,000 to $250,000 a year. “But those figures are negotiable depending on the earning history of the candidate,” he said.

He noted that many people had applied for the job while others were recruited. “The people most sought after are not applying,” he said. “After all, they are much loved by their current employers and involved in important businesses and organizations.”

“They’re just not going to jump out of the ocean and into the boat,” he added. “They need to be contacted and informed about the challenge, and then recruited.”