Raymond E. Spear - school superintendent; Rhode Island - Interview

School Administrator, March, 1995

Feisty and Forthright, His Counsel's Widely Sought

When school district leaders in Rhode Island find themselves headed for trouble professionally, sooner or later they all turn to the same source for help: Ray Spear.

With 27 years of experience as a superintendent, the last 15 in Coventry, R.I., Spear concedes there are few school-related issues he has not confronted. Neither has he ever demonstrated any reticence about offering advice.

"I always tell it like it is--whether I should or I shouldn't--so people don't have to guess where I'm coming from," says Spear.

That feistiness is what friends and colleagues first point to about the veteran school district leader. Spear's secretary, Pauline Rainone, has nicknamed him "the white tornado," noting, "When he walks in, you know he's there." A superintendent colleague, in helping to honor Spear as Rhode Island's superintendent of the year in 1993, noted, "When he finishes an oratory, there is no question where he stands."

Todd Flaherty, Coventry's lone assistant superintendent, says there's no ambiguity about what Spear expects from his staff. Flaherty puts it this way: "Administration is not a shell game with him. ... He doesn't spend time beating around the bush, whether he's working with the public, the school committee, or the unions."

Spear says when he makes up his mind and has an arsenal of facts to back up his stand, he's willing to take on anyone. In 1991, he publicly blasted the state's new governor, Bruce Sundlun for "running around talking about all that we have to do is 'get tough like me.

More recently the governor, too, has come to welcome Spear's counsel. Says Rainone admiringly of her boss: "He ended up being the governor's favorite superintendent. When the governor would address the (state) superintendents' association, he would single out Ray Spear." Sundlun also recently named Spear one of his designees on Rhode Island's Goals 2000 panel.

Spear's fellow superintendents, acknowledging his role as their dean, asked him to chair the Rhode Island Association of School Administrators' Professional Ethics Committee for the past nine years. About once a year, he is approached by a colleague seeking advice on how to deal with troubled school board relations. In helping to set up the ethics committee, Spear got the association to charge each member an extra $10 to build a legal defense fund.

Within his own 5,500-student district, Spear's straight-ahead approach has moved Coventry to the state's top echelon.

He creatively applied state literacy funds to extend the school year for atrisk pupils in the primary grades and to support the Reading Recovery program in first grade. An alternative learning program for failing high school students now is in its seventh year.

Spear takes his greatest pride in reviewing the overall improvements in Coventry's educational program, which he contends was the object of ridicule when he came aboard in 1980. "Operating the sixth largest school district in the state at the third or fourth lowest cost per pupil is no easy task," he says, "and getting the job done while maintaining high standards and excellence in reputation is most satisfying."

His only regret about Coventry's academic program is his inability to muster citizen or legislative support in his earlier years for year-round schooling, a concept he introduced in Michigan in the early 19 Os as superintendent of the Northville Public Schools, a district with comparable enrollment.

He calls year-round s ooling the "best opportunity to me t the needs of slow learners [and] t accelerate the learning of rapid learners. ... I'd pick it up in a minute, ut you can't operate in a vacuum.

Three months short of his 64th birthday, Spear sporadically has hinted that he soon may retire from the professional ranks. Flaherty, his deputy, may contribute t the speculation when he jokes, "I tell him he was a superintendent when E was a freshman on the football t am at Syracuse.

Spear plans to broach his possible retirement with his school committee this spring when it discusses his contract renewal.

"In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, at 65 I ought to get out of the way and give myself a break."