School Board Will Keep Romer

City schools chief Roy Romer emerged unscathed this week from lengthy, sometimes blustery debate over his performance by the Los Angeles Board of Education.

Late Tuesday night, board members critical of Romer put aside their reservations about him, clearing the way for the superintendent to remain in charge of the nation’s second-largest school district until the end of his contract in 2007.

The decision to retain Romer, 76, comes at a critical time, as the 742,000-student district pushes ahead with a massive school construction project but continues to weather criticism for its uneven pace of reform on several fronts. Romer has come under increased scrutiny for lack of progress on, among other things, reorganizing high schools and boosting graduation rates.

Faced with a Friday deadline to decide whether to dismiss Romer at the end of June or leave him in charge for another year, the board’s vote of confidence came after a contentious day of private meetings in which some board members expressed frustrations with Romer’s leadership.

“We are all working with a sense of urgency ... and sometimes there is a tremendous amount of impatience,” said Marlene Canter, the board president and a Romer supporter. “With the unevenness of the progress that is being made and operating in an environment where we are constantly under scrutiny, when you start talking about these things, it becomes emotional.”

Without Romer present, the seven-member board began Tuesday with a heated, closed-door meeting on the superintendent’s contract and performance.

Board members declined to discuss details of the confidential meeting, but several said board members Jon Lauritzen, Jose Huizar and Marguerite LaMotte raised the prospect of pushing back Friday’s deadline until December to have more time to consider Romer’s fate.

“The district has come under some severe attacks from a number of directions and the superintendent has to share some of the blame for that,” Lauritzen said Wednesday. “I didn’t want to just let this deadline pass without at least having a serious discussion about what the superintendent has been doing.”

After about three hours, the morning session was forced into recess when some board members walked out, leaving too few for a quorum, Canter said.

The morning’s turmoil had been tempered considerably by Tuesday night, when weary board members and Romer returned to closed session after working through a long, public- meeting agenda. With Huizar and LaMotte gone, Lauritzen said the need to present a unified front outweighed lingering concerns.

“As long as there wasn’t a clear majority” against Romer, “we wanted to go forward with him,” Lauritzen said.

Huizar and LaMotte did not return calls seeking comment.

Romer, the former governor of Colorado and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was hired in 2000. In 2004, the school board extended his contract until June 2007. Under the terms of the agreement, either side had until Friday to opt out of the contract’s last year.

Romer said he welcomed the board’s discussion about his performance and looked forward to his remaining time at the district’s helm.

“This board has a lot of strong and different opinions,” Romer said. “We will continue to have a lot of exchanges at times, but we will continue going down the road.... I’ve got a lot of work left to do.”

Board members agree that Romer’s leadership is crucial to persuading voters to approve a nearly $4-billion school construction bond issue on the November ballot. The money, district officials say, is needed to complete the district’s building program, which aims to open about 185 new schools and modernize others to end severe crowding.

As part of the ongoing building program, Romer was responsible for the first high school to be built in 30 years and took 57 schools off controversial year-round calendars. He also is credited with overseeing elementary grade reforms that have led to improved test scores.

But he is widely seen as having a top-down management style that some board members say excludes even them. He has brought in consultants and top leaders from outside the district to restructure the central administration.

Board members indicated that they hoped that Romer would better communicate with them as he addressed several other pressing issues.

The district is under a court order to improve services to special education students and is also struggling to close the wide achievement gap between white and minority students. At the same time, the district is in the early phases of overhauling high schools into smaller, more personalized groups in an effort to lessen dropout rates and improve academic performance.