Articles

Executives trained by turnaround nonprofit
By Alex Katz, STAFF WRITER
805 words
11 August 2003
The Oakland Tribune
English
© Copyright 2003 ANG Newspapers. All rights reserved.

OAKLAND -- The school district's new chief of staff is among a crop of administrators produced by an increasingly influential education nonprofit that trains executives to turn around urban school systems.

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Arnold "Woody" Carter graduated last year from an academy created by the politically-connected Broad Foundation to train urban superintendents. Oakland schools chief Randolph Ward also is participating in the foundation's training program, called the Broad Center for Superintendents.

Billionaire and major Democratic contributor Eli Broad started the Los Angeles-based foundation in 1999, putting up more than $400 million of his own money to do so. The chairman of SunAmerica financial services company and founder of homebuilding giant KB Homes has since taken a high-profile role in the urban school reform movement, and has become a leading education philanthropist.

Center was called in by Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell to recommend an administrator to run the Oakland schools following a state takeover.

Brown and Broad are longtime allies, and O'Connell is a major recipient of Broad campaign contributions.

"When we learned about the problems in Oakland, we wanted to be helpful," Broad said. "We regret ... that (former superintendent) Dennis Chaconas, who we also knew, wasn't watching the fiscal end, or had someone doing that for him."

The state took over the Oakland schools in June after major accounting errors, combined with a seriously flawed, obsolete computer system, led the district to spend about $80 million it did not have during the last two years.

Chaconas was fired and the school board stripped of its authority after Gov. Gray Davis signed off on the takeover.

According to Broad, Chaconas' admitted lack of financial expertise was partly to blame for Oakland's fiscal crisis.

"The problem that Dennis (Chaconas) and others like him have is they start as teachers, and then 30 years later they become superintendents with no training in finance, labor relations, etc., and they surround themselves with people like them," Broad said. "I think people need the kind of training we give them. There's no other place I know of where they can get it."

The Broad Center for Superintendents accepts only about 1 in 10 applicants, all top executives in business, the military, nonprofits, government or education.

"I think we're going to see more and more of what we call non-traditional superintendents," Broad said, citing New York City and Chicago as examples of major cities where non-educators were put in charge of schools.

Whether that trend will prove successful in such cities as New York and Los Angeles remains to be seen.

Broad played a key role in former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein's appointment as New York schools chancellor.

Broad Center students learn about the complexities of school finance, management and labor relations in a 10-month program that includes seven weekends of training in cities around the country. Speakers at past trainings included Rod Paige, President Bush's secretary of education, and Henry Cisneros, former President Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development.

Although Broad said he does not see Oakland as a test case for his program, it is the largest and maybe the most problematic district to be run by Broad Center students.

The center, which graduated its first class last year, also has placed superintendents in Albuquerque, N.M., Providence, R.I., Ft. Wayne, Ind. and a few other cities.

A different Broad program has placed another administrator with a financial background in the Oakland schools. Monique Epps, a former business manager with the National Basketball Association, starts work next month in the schools' finance office, with 75 percent of her salary covered by Broad.

"I hope (the Broad Foundation's involvement in Oakland) isn't just about getting jobs for themselves and their friends," school board member Dan Siegel said. "I hope they have something to offer."

Two years ago, the foundation paid $6,000 for an Oakland school board field trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, to teach board members how to tolerate each other.

Broad is a big supporter of charter schools, and has given $4.7 million to Aspire Public Schools, a Northern California charter company that has two schools in East Oakland.

In an open letter on his foundation's Web site, Broad says he believes in "healthy competition" for public schools, including charter schools, and some use of vouchers. But he says his focus is on "reforming and reinvigorating the public school system itself."

When it comes to future grants, Oakland can apply to the foundation like any other district, Broad said.