Info, Please, Mr. Romer

When the chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company makes a high-level hiring mistake, the business often quickly buys out the new employee and sends him packing. That is also what happened in the Los Angeles Unified School District after Supt. Roy Romer hired a new chief operating officer, who Romer now says wasn’t a good fit. After two months in the position, Allen Solomon was invited to leave with a buy-out reportedly in the range of his $195,000 annual salary, which is enough to pay the salaries of five new teachers.

Solomon had left UCLA, where he was associate vice dean of operations, to oversee all LAUSD operations with the exception of instruction. What did he expect when he accepted the job in April? Facilities, technology and other divisions were to report to him, and he would report to the superintendent. That was changed, according to Romer, so senior management would report to the superintendent. Why wasn’t this worked out in advance?

Doesn’t the school district, which has a $9-billion budget, need a chief operating officer to coordinate the efforts of senior management? That system worked well before Romer took over a year ago because the separation allowed interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to concentrate on instruction, his area of expertise and the most important mission of the district, while Howard Miller stayed on top of everything else.

This isn’t the first time the district has struck out quickly with a business czar. Former Supt. Sid Thompson hired former Arco executive William Magee for the job in 1994. Magee lasted five months before he quit. The next superintendent, Ruben Zacarias, hired retired Kaiser Permanente executive Hugh Jones in 1997 to serve as chief administrative officer. After two months, Jones left. Miller stayed in the job for nine months, until Romer replaced Cortines.

The terms of Solomon’s deal are confidential, as are all LAUSD personnel and legal matters, and Solomon isn’t talking. Neither is his lawyer.

There are allegations by unnamed sources that Solomon was a man ready to sweep the district clean of waste and that’s why he couldn’t last at the LAUSD. Romer says that’s nonsense. Yet the sorry history of the post of chief administrative officer raises a question: Why didn’t Romer think through the hiring of Solomon before he put the touch on the taxpayer’s purse?

The superintendent can make monetary decisions of up to $250,000 without board approval. It’s proper that Romer should have such authority. But he should have to explain to the school board why Solomon came and went so quickly, and the elected board should have to explain it to the taxpayers.