The Washington Post

06-10-2004

D.C. Close to Hiring Superintendent From Calif.
Byline: Jay Mathews Washington Post Staff Writer
Edition: FINAL
Section: Metro

LONG BEACH, Calif., June 9 --
Former Long Beach superintendent Carl A. Cohn told a delegation of District
leaders Wednesday that he is very interested in the job of D.C. schools
chief, and Mayor Anthony A. Williams and other officials said Cohn could
be appointed to the post as early as next week.

Williams (D) also said he is dropping his eight-month-old campaign to gain
direct control of the city's school system because the effort was making
Cohn reluctant to come to Washington. Williams and D.C. Council members
said they now have agreed, at Cohn's request, to leave the current school
oversight structure in place for at least four more years.

The mayor took the unusual step of flying 2,700 miles to this California
port to woo Cohn, whose 10-year record in the 97,000-student school district
has been widely praised. D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), council
member Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) and Board of Education President Peggy
Cooper Cafritz also came on the recruiting trip.

Cohn and the four D.C. leaders sat around a boardroom table at the Hilton
Long Beach hotel after a 90-minute midday meeting and said that the only
things left to do were for District officials to make the changes requested
by Cohn and for Cohn to discuss the job with his family.

Cohn, 58, who had earlier expressed concern about the lack of clear authority
held by the D.C. superintendent, said the meeting with the D.C. delegation
and a breakfast with Williams earlier in the day made it much more likely
he would take the job. "I am about 75 percent of the way there," he said.

He said he will be discussing the D.C. position in the next few days with
his wife and two children.

The four visiting District officials, who serve on a seven-member panel
called the D.C. education collaborative that will recommend a superintendent
candidate to the school board, said they were prepared to forward Cohn's
name early next week, in time for the board to vote on Cohn at its regular
meeting Wednesday.

Williams announced in September that he would seek the authority to hire
and fire the superintendent, a power now held by the school board. The
council has since rejected the mayor's proposal, and Williams has vetoed
a school oversight plan approved by the council.

Cohn, one of four finalists for superintendent, had expressed concern about
the dispute. He said he was worried he would not be able to attract top
staff and follow through on reforms unless the same governance structure
remained in place for at least four years.

Williams said Wednesday that he agreed to drop his plan for mayoral control
after Cohn told him at their breakfast that he would not take the job if
he was not clearly in charge.

The mayor said: "When I came out here, my attitude was, I'm going to sit
down with Carl and I'm going to say, 'Carl, what do you think would be
the best structure that would create an environment of success for you?'
. . If he in his considered experience and judgment says he needs these
things, I'm going to back him."

Chavous said of Cohn, "This is our guy, and we feel we are making significant
progress in getting the best instruction leader in the country."

Reading scores for elementary school students improved significantly during
Cohn's leadership in Long Beach, and his decision to require uniforms for
students in kindergarten through eighth grade won him national attention.

After meeting with the D.C. leaders, Cohn said that in the District, "teaching
kids to read early has to be the single most important initiative." But
he also talked about radically changing the relationship between the superintendent
and the school board so that board meetings could become businesslike and
short.

Cohn said if he took the superintendent's job, he would try to institute
the same school board meeting system he had in Long Beach. That board,
with only five members, usually backed him unanimously -- in part, he said,
because he had periodic, 21/2-day public meetings in which board members
discussed with him their vision for the schools' future but made no decisions.
Votes on policy were left for regular business meetings that rarely lasted
more than an hour, because the board had already had a chance to air its
views, he said.

Cohn said he wanted to dispense with the practice, common in the District
and other Washington area school districts, in which a superintendent
spends days preparing for a five- or six-hour school board meeting and
then has to spend more days trying to execute a number of decisions made
by the board, many of them actions involving small administrative details.

Cafritz said the D.C. board "had already voted in February to forsake
that kind of micromanagement" and would give Cohn the support he wanted.

The D.C. school board consists of five elected members and four mayoral
appointees.

Cropp was calling council members from her hotel room Wednesday morning
to win support for a bill that would leave the hybrid board in place for
at least four more years, in response to Cohn's concerns. Chavous said
the council probably would vote on the measure by early next week.

The delegation of D.C. officials also said they had agreed to Cohn's request
to have the superintendent put in charge of the District's State Education
Office. Cohn and Cafritz said this would allow Cohn to improve the way
the District handles federal grants, federal special education rules and
individual school restructuring under the federal No Child Left Behind
law.

Staff writer Justin Blum in Washington contributed to this report.

Keywords: MET

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.