In recent years, school systems in New York, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago and New Orleans, among other cities, have hired superintendents with managerial know-how acquired outside the field of education. This is going to be interesting. I expect he will look back on his governorship as a far easier job. After two unhappy years as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he wanted to get back to education, and was deep in conversations with several foundations about how the school reform effort might be better defined and advanced. This district has every problem there is.
Test scores are very low.
We are short 85 buildings of adequately housing our current student population, let alone the growth we know is coming. There is discussion about dissolving the district. And there are 711,000 students depending on us, more than go to school in 27 states. He is mounting a bucking bronco. Casserly said that in the past few years, the average tenure of a big city school superintendent has actually declined from 2.7 years to 2.4 years.