Schools Chief Interviews End In Consensus

Sawyer then moved to lead the public schools in a city that was central to the seminal Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case a half-century ago. In Topeka, he runs schools with about 13,400 students, slightly more than half of them members of ethnic or racial minorities, and earns $159,000 a year.

He said it was a "pivotal experience" to be an African American educator in Topeka in 2004 on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown. He said that would benefit him in majority-black Prince George's.

"I personally feel as though I stood on the shoulders of giants," Sawyer said. "I basically am a manifestation of a civil rights movement that still has not reached its completion."

Sawyer sought to position himself between Deasy, who runs a 14,000-student system, and Lyles, whose school region encompasses 80,000 students.

"I've had all of the above," Sawyer told reporters in a news conference. "I've had small schools; I've had large schools."

Sawyer, like Lyles, served in the gigantic New York school system at the same time as Andre J. Hornsby, the former Prince George's schools chief they are seeking to succeed. Hornsby quit the post last year amid an ethics controversy. Sawyer said Hornsby "was someone I had a lot of respect for professionally."

Some civic activists who heard Sawyer in a late afternoon session endorsed him afterward. Phil Lee of the Kettering Civic Federation said he liked Sawyer's advocacy of vocational education and his philosophy of isolating older, unruly students in evening high schools when they become too disruptive on campus. Lee also liked Sawyer's manner.

"He appeared to be in his own zone, fluid and easy," Lee said.

But others said they were partial to Deasy. "He was polished but not arrogant," said Howard Tutman III, head of a county parent advisory board.