The Two Mr. Bauers

Plumbing can be a family business. So can the presidency. But being a school principal, typically, is not a profession for father and son.

That is why two Mr. Bauers are getting noticed--Ron as the veteran principal of El Camino Real High School, his son Brian as the rookie head of Granada Hills High.

Already, a cross-Valley rivalry is developing between them.

This will not be a rivalry fought only on the football field. Messrs. Bauer intend to one-up each other in every measure of school accountability that a school board can throw at them. On test scores, college acceptances--even attendance--count on them to fight it out, in a friendly way, as leaders of two of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s best high schools.

Take the academic decathlon, the annual battle of brains. El Camino Real has excelled during Ron Bauer’s tenure, winning the national trophy in 1998.

“Beware ECR,” Brian said, issuing the challenge to his dad’s school. “Your dynasty is long-lived, but it is soon to be over.”

Ron fired back, firmly: “Our expectation will be to win the city championship for the sixth consecutive year.” Take that, sonny.

That father and son are both working as senior high principals, at competing schools, in the same district, at the same time amazes them both--and their colleagues. Ron always thought his middle child was headed for a career in politics, and he certainly never encouraged him to take on the long hours and pressures of education.

Even more unusual, Brian is 32--at least a decade younger than most high school principals, and possibly the youngest senior high principal the district has ever had.

His 53-year-old father followed the traditional track for a school head, starting 30 years ago as a math teacher and moving from campus to campus as he rose in the district’s ranks. When Ron was 32, he was just starting to take on the sort of administrative jobs that lead to becoming a principal. He took over at El Camino Real, in Woodland Hills in 1995.

Brian’s career has been much more compact. He deferred law school after college for an unplanned start teaching Spanish and English, then for two years studied in South America. He had two brief stints as assistant principal after he returned, and since late November has headed the 3,900-student high school in Granada Hills.

The younger Mr. Bauer was tested early. His second morning on the job, as students pulled into the Granada Hills parking lot, a senior pumped up his car radio and then shot himself in the head. It was only 7 a.m. Handling reporters and TV cameras, getting counseling for upset students and calming worried parents still lay ahead.

When the campus settled down, Brian Bauer asked his students to write about the feelings the incident evoked. The assignment surprised them, some students said, as does Bauer’s custom of greeting them every morning as they arrive and saying, “See you tomorrow,” as they shuffle out the school’s green gates in the afternoon.

“We see him a lot more than other principals,” said senior Rich Bashara.

“We feel comfortable around him,” freshman Sandra Gray said.

Local Supt. Deborah Leidner, who oversees both Bauers’ schools, was also impressed by how her young principal and his staff handled the Dec. 1 suicide.

“I don’t think there was any doubt in their minds as to who was in charge,” she said.

Leidner has already seen how closely each Bauer is watching the other. In a recent e-mail, Ron Bauer let Leidner know that seven of El Camino’s teachers had just become nationally certified, earning an extra credential that few teachers have, even at the best schools. How many of those special teachers, Bauer wondered playfully, did Granada Hills have?

“It certainly was not done to crow,” Leidner said, “It was done [as a challenge] to--you know--’Let Junior top Dad.’ ” (For the record, Junior’s school had five.)

“There is a natural competition between the schools anyway,” Leidner said. “It’s been that way a long time. This is just taking it a step further.”

In Saturday’s citywide round of the academic decathlon, Brian Bauer does not really expect his students to outsmart Ron Bauer’s--at least not this year. But he has used the family rivalry to motivate the Highlanders’ decathletes.

“Once the students heard the other Mr. Bauer is principal of El Camino Real,” Brian said, “they’ve really taken quite an interest.”

“The other Mr. Bauer” seems more relaxed than his son, but says they could both stand to loosen up a bit. Around campus they carry the principal’s tools--a bulging key ring and a scratchy walkie-talkie. Brian has more height--he’s 6 foot 4. His dad has more hair. They share droopy, bushy eyebrows.

Granada Hills students have noticed that their new principal wears snappy suits. El Camino’s Mr. Bauer is comfortable walking the Conquistadores’ courtyards in a blue-and-yellow letterman’s jacket.

Ron’s desk is organized in stacks, his office decorated with three decades of school certificates, prom photos and artwork by some of El Camino’s 3,600 students. Brian, the bachelor, works amid more clutter--file folders piled around the room, a stray box top on the carpet. Posters from his world travels hang on the walls.

Father and son talk by phone almost daily, usually from their cars. They run into each other at principals’ meetings, where they have endured friendly isn’t-that-cute teasing by colleagues, and at games between their schools. In the two months both Bauers have been principals, El Camino and Granada Hills have met in boys’ and girls’ soccer and basketball.

“It’s split right now,” Brian said of the 2-2 win-loss record.

Not that anybody’s keeping track.