Here Come the Mr. Fixits

These are hard times for school superintendents everywhere. Since spring, superintendents have resigned or been asked to leave in a dozen large U.S. cities besides Washington. Among them: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, St. Louis and San Francisco. In large part, the troubles besetting superintendents reflect the emergence of more politically active school board members who want to run the schools themselves. Says William Henry, associate director of the American Association of School Administrators: "The pattern developing across the country is board members as Mr. Fixits. I am not sure any superintendent can manage any big-city school system any more."

Indeed, boards and superintendents can scarcely avoid being at odds given the range of difficulties facing urban school systems today: squeezed budgets, falling student enrollments, rising teacher militancy, and in some areas still-smoldering race problems. Last week the Baltimore board fired Superintendent Roland Patterson after 12 days of raucous and acrimonious public hearings. The board charged Patterson, 47 and black, with "short changing" the city's schools (74% black) by lowering academic standards and failing to end school violence. In Chicago, Superintendent James F. Redmond announced that he would not accept reappointment to his $56,000-a-year job when his contract expires next month, citing "constant bickering" among the city's twelve board members and criticism of the low scores of Chicago pupils. Boston's school committee eased out William Leary as its $47,500-a-year superintendent in April amid allegations that he went along too easily with court-ordered desegregation. Milwaukee's board dropped dapper former superintendent Richard P. Gousha largely because it did not like what critics called his "Madison Avenue touch."

A few harassed superintendents believe that a move can be therapeutic. San Francisco's new school chief, Robert Alioto (no kin to Mayor Joseph Alioto), admits that he was not sorry to leave his old superintendent's job in Yonkers, N.Y., because there the president of the local teachers' union "has a strong dislike for me." Some shell-shocked superintendents maintain that true peace is possible only through retirement. After wrestling thanklessly with budget problems for two years, Alflorence Cheatham resigned as the Cambridge, Mass., superintendent last spring, citing poor health. Says he: "There is only so much you can take. I got worn out and quit. Now I'm reading four and five books a week."

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