Not So Super

Looking for more bad news on the schools front? Consider the pathetic tenure and now departure of LA schools chief David Brewer. Two years ago the former admiral was jammed in as a hire by then-school board president Marlene Canter in a power play meant to upstage Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was trying to wrest control from the school board at the time (he failed to get Bloomberg-style control, but finally got a group of schools to supervise; in my consulting life I played a small role in helping develop the reform blueprint for them). At the time, Canter said it was so urgent that a talent like Brewer be brought in that he had to be named while the Mayor was out of town and unable to meet with him. Some talent. Brewer has been virtually a cipher; as an LA resident and reform-watcher I can’t name a single important thing he did for two years. Now, with a critical mass of civic leaders finally demanding something better, he’s gotten what looks to be a $500,000 buyout of his contract. Meanwhile the clock has counted off two more ineffective years of education for hundreds of thousands of kids stuck in low-performing schools – losses that will blight their life chances merely because of where they happened to be born. As usual, it’s all about the children.