L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy presented a grand, difficult bargain Wednesday in his first, formal address to administrators of the nation’s second-largest school system.
He will try to get out of their way and also remove constraints from an “ossified” bureaucracy. They, in turn, will have to deliver sharply improving academic achievement.
“I’m committed to finding ways to provide the support necessary to free you from the restraints that impede you from this work,” said Deasy, noting that his expectations could make their jobs uncomfortable at times.
As he has on other occasions, Deasy read from Martin Luther King Jr.'s explanation of his impatience to end segregation at lunch counters and elsewhere, out of which Deasy stated his own imperative for results.
“We are indeed impatient,” Deasy said. “The lunch counter for LAUSD youth is graduation and proficiency and attendance.”
The annual, start-of-the-year speech to administrators has become a much-watched ritual in the Los Angeles Unified School District, a temperature check of sorts on the district’s top manager, his program and how the rank-and-file are receiving it. Deasy assumed the top spot in mid-April, with the retirement of Ramon C. Cortines. Like his predecessors, Deasy took pleasure in reciting the achievements of particular schools at some length.
But as superintendent Deasy has had to take responsibility for “restructuring” several low-performing middle and high schools. In that process, all staff must reinterview for jobs; administrators are typically replaced along with most teachers. Deasy has clearly signaled he’s prepared to take this step as often as he feels necessary.
Administrators packed into the historic Hollywood High School auditorium were well aware of the school-site shake-ups and some expressed, anonymously, some wariness toward Deasy.
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