The board was scheduled to meet…
By Adam Kramer
As the 2001 school year comes to a close, members of School Board 29 are putting together another C-37 superintendent search committee in the hopes of finding the right person to lead the embattled school district.
The board was scheduled to meet Thursday to start the process of setting up the third committee in as many years. The committee will interview prospective candidates to run the district that has been under Michael Johnson as the district administrator.
“We have gotten new resumes from the call for candidates, which ended on June 4,” said SB 29 President Nathaniel Washington. “The same process begins again. We will work through the summer and hopefully by September we will have someone in place.”
He said now that the school year is ending, more test scores will be available for Board 29 and the C-37 committee to compare the district’s performance with the candidates’ districts to help make a decision.
Johnson is Schools Chancellor Harold Levy’s choice to run the district. Levy has called him one of the stars in the school system. But at a May meeting Levy told the board he would reassess his position on Johnson if test scores dropped.
Levy’s comments were a slight switch from previous statements. He has said he would not turn down all candidates but would only approve candidates whom he considers better than Johnson. The chancellor has rejected five of the candidates chosen by the district’s previous C-37 superintendent search committees.
According to the state’s Elementary English Language Arts Performance level, the mean score for District 29’s students was 637 out of a maximum of 800, which was down two points from last year and up six points from 1999. The mean score places the district at Level 2 with the highest being Level 4. At Level 2, students need extra help to meet the standards and to pass the regents exam.
Washington said restarting the committee was “the only route we had to put someone in place.” He said the process could start after a vote at the board’s next public meeting on June 21. SB 29 represents the communities stretching from Bellerose to St. Albans and Queens Village to Rosedale and also covers Cambria Heights, Laurelton and parts of Jamaica and Fresh Meadows.
“We had no other choice, no legal option once we exhausted the last committee,” said Leroy Comrie, school board member and former president. “There is no other legal means to appoint a superintendent.”
He said the central board does not want the C-37 committee to meet during the summer because by September some parents will drop out of the PTA and there will be new members.
“I don’t envision the process going on through the summer,” he said.
Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Board of Education, said District 29 “voted to advertise for the position” and decided to start the process of looking for a superintendent.
Johnson did not return repeated phone calls to ask whether he has submitted an application for the job.
The board is mandated by law to follow the C-37 process, which calls for it to advertise the position for 20 days. Then the C-37 committee has 45 days to choose 10 candidates, four or five of whom will be submitted to the board. The board then has 30 days to review the candidates before submitting names to the chancellor, and then Levy has 30 days to approve or reject the nominees.
The school district has been in limbo since Superintendent Celestine Miller was fired in February 1999 by then-Chancellor Rudy Crew for delaying to report that an 8-year-old boy had gone into a Rosedale school carrying a loaded gun. Miller was recently indicted on bid-rigging charges involving computer sales to schools under her control.
After Miller left, District 29 had an acting interim superintendent, but Levy suspended the school board, which was reinstated after Johnson arrived on the scene.
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
