Cleanup Man

Chicago had to make up for ten years of inept and corrupt public-school administration. For months, a reform school board had been looking for a man to clean up the disorder left by Mayor Ed Kelly's stooge, Superintendent William Johnson. The reform board, appointed with the approval of Chicago's new businessman mayor, Martin H. Kennelly, had found Chicago's teaching staff unhappy victims of political conniving and its school system on the blacklist of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. Last week, the board unanimously confirmed 45-year-old Herold C. Hunt as its new superintendent. Three days later the N.C.A.C.S.S. took Chicago off its blacklist.

Chicago's new superintendent of schools is a genial Rotarian with a glad hand and a quick mind, who has run Kansas City's schools for the past seven years. He also heads the American Association of School Administrators. A preacher at heart, Episcopalian Herold Hunt likes to fill in for vacationing ministers (he always draws a big crowd), often preaches to his teachers, too ("Don't be a grouch, avoid the 'little God' complex"). But Kansas City teachers remember him with affection: he got more money for his teachers than any man before him, boosted teachers' maximum pay from $2,500 to $4,550.

When Chicago went shopping for a new superintendent, it found that Hunt had been one of three out-of-towners considered for New York City's superintendency, and learned that San Francisco was also after him.* Chicago decided not to let Herold Hunt get away, offered him the new job of general superintendent and $25,000 a year--$9,000 more than it has ever paid a superintendent before, $7,000 more than it pays its mayor.

* San Francisco settled for its second choice, able Superintendent Herbert C. Clish of New Rochelle, N.Y.

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