Bracing For Perestroika

By Susan Tifft

It may be the toughest job in U.S. public education. But Joseph Fernandez, who takes over this week as chancellor of New York City schools, is itching for the challenge. Since he was tapped for the post last September, the onetime math teacher has commuted six times from Miami, where he served for two years as Dade County school superintendent. His mission: to confer with civic and union leaders, politicians, teachers, parents, the press and anyone else with a stake in the nation's largest (940,000 students), and perhaps most troubled, public school system. Says Fernandez: "I had to convince the city that I am serious about restructuring."

Few now doubt that Fernandez, 54, is serious. Born in East Harlem of Puerto Rican parents, the former high school dropout and University of Miami graduate comes to New York with firsthand knowledge of the city's racial and ethnic divisions. In Miami, he is credited with having transformed public instruction, a feat he hopes to duplicate in his new post. "We're losing the Gorbachev of American education," laments Andy Gollan, a spokesman for the Dade County school board. The question is whether the New York system, with its 27.3% dropout rate and entrenched tradition of cronyism, is ready for educational perestroika.

At the top of Fernandez's agenda is the abolition of the Board of Examiners, a city agency that duplicates many of the licensing procedures already required by the state. He also plans to push for a law banning the city's practice of allowing a principal to serve as the head of his school for as long as he wishes, a kind of lifetime tenure that Fernandez claims can shield poor performers. "I have a low threshold for tolerating incompetence," he says. -

New York's decentralized network of school boards is also certain to come under scrutiny. When Fernandez's predecessor, Richard Green, died last May, a third of the 32 district boards were under investigation for charges ranging from selling jobs to drug dealing. Fernandez wants more authority over these bodies, including the power to audit their books.

The centerpiece of the new chancellor's plan is "school-based management," an approach he introduced in Dade County. With this strategy, in use in 130 of Miami's 260 schools, much of the power has passed from elected officials to individual schools. Although student test scores have not improved and morale at some Miami schools has actually dipped, Fernandez remains committed to installing a similar program in New York.

Fernandez's detractors complain that he has an authoritarian manner and is too chummy with the local teachers union. He has already alienated city bureaucrats by appointing a deputy chancellor critical of the school system and by announcing plans to eliminate some 200 jobs at the board of education's central headquarters. Meanwhile, eyebrows have been raised over his hefty compensation package, which includes a $195,000 salary, free housing and $214,000 in supplemental pension pay. But Fernandez seems impervious to criticism."One thing I will never have is an ulcer," he shrugs. "I get angry and move on."

With reporting by James Carney/Miami and Janice C. Simpson/New York