The Super

Washington Monthly, June, 2001 by Matthew Miller

L.A. Superintendent Roy Romer may be the most talented man ever to run a big-city school district, also bound to fail. There's a lesson in that.

ROY ROMER FLIPPED THROUGH THE 20-page list of demands and felt the anger rising. He'd rushed across the country for this? It was October 30, and Romer, former three-term Democratic governor of Colorado who had taken over July 1 as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), had caught the first plane from Pittsburgh that morning for what he'd been told would be the final days of teacher-contract negotiations. The stalled talks had put most other district business on hold. For months Romer had personally wooed the union over breakfasts, at church meetings, and in countless listening sessions. As governor he had successfully mediated teacher talks in Denver and felt a reprise was certain. With state coffers flush, Romer reckoned, he'd lock up a win-win deal with the teachers early, clearing the decks for a single-minded district focus on better instruction for L.A.'s languishing kids. He'd offered a 10-percent raise from the start, hoping to skip the usual inch-by-inch dance. Romer had even reneged on a deal inked by his predecessor that tied administrators' pay hikes to teachers', leaving more money in the pot for teachers alone. Instead of thanking him, Romer knew, the union was plotting with administrators to gin up a strike.

Now, in the conference room at union headquarters, Romer, 72, flanked by 10 district colleagues, faced a phalanx of union reps across the table. Union president Day Higuchi walked Romer through page after page of demands. Eliminate travel for certain types of training, establish a "classroom bill of rights," cap class size permanently in all grades. District staffers exchanged confused glances. Higuchi was presenting the work of virtually every union committee. Most of the demands had been heard before.

"This is not what I expected," Romer said finally, boiling over. "I've been devoting a lot of time to this process, and neglecting other things I need to do in this district. It doesn't look like you're ready to seal the deal. I'm questioning whether you want this thing sealed at all."

"No, no, no," the union leaders said in chorus. They weren't trying to kill things, they insisted. This is important for our internal politics, they explained. We need to be able to say these issues were raised directly with the superintendent.

"When you get rid of all these," Romer replied, waving the handout, "and you're ready to deal with four or five important issues, I'll come back into the picture."

Romer was having his epiphany. He had impeccable pro-labor credentials. As chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Romer had plotted political strategy with the teacher unions, one of his party's most loyal and powerful supporters. Yet four months in the trenches had Romer thinking dangerous thoughts; namely that the teacher unions might be the biggest problem urban school systems faced. The bosses ran the place like an old-style industrial union, he felt, screaming about wages, hours, and working conditions--not collaborating like professionals on ways to lift student achievement. They demonized Romer and his staff to build power. And since the union largely controlled school-board elections, the whole system felt rigged. How was a super supposed to make headway when the union was on both sides of the table? Every time he tried to hang tough on issues of management authority over teacher assignment or training, for example, the union would get four members on Romer's seven-member board to pull the rug out. Frustrated, Romer had to face facts: The radical change in labor relations he felt was a prerequisite for improved student performance was not going to happen. It was tragic Romer thought, but it was also reality. Time for Plan B.

Romer's appointment last year marked a climax of sorts for Los Angeles after a decade of well-meaning but ineffective attempts to fix its schools. In the early '90s, civic leaders flocked to "systemic reform" schemes with acronyms like LAMMP and LEARN. Millions of foundation dollars documented the dysfunction of the district central office, dubbed "the forbidden city" by one local wag. In 1999, frustrated by the district's resistance to change and by his own lack of official power over the schools, Mayor Richard Riordan, an uncharismatic multimillionaire with a strong moral streak, successfully bankrolled a three-person slate of reform-minded school-board candidates. The new board promptly ousted Ruben Zacarias, a superintendent widely viewed as incompetent. His interim successor, the well-regarded educator Ramon Cortines, came out of retirement to reorganize the sprawling district into 11 "local" districts with the hope that they might prove more manageable. Cortines also established the depressing (but revealing) goals of a textbook and clean bathroom for every student.

These sad milestones had not been reached when Romer found himself in L.A. last spring helping plan the Democratic convention. One day he met with Eli Broad, the billionaire real-estate developer and civic activist, in Broad's office in Century City. As they gazed over the L.A. basin from Broad's sweeping 38th-floor view, Romer told Broad about his passion for schooling. Romer had chaired the key education forums in the governors' groups. He'd studied the standards movement and felt it held promise for poor kids. He told Broad he planned to launch a think-tank-style project that he hoped would do for schools what the famed Jackson Hole group had done to advance ideas on health reform. Broad instantly saw a different possibility. With interim superintendent Cortines set to depart, he told Romer, the L.A. superintendent's job was open. Why don't you consider it, Broad suggested. It would be a chance to "do" education before reflecting on it.