Two Pr. George's Tryouts Emerge as Front-Runners
By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Key Prince George's County school officials, politicians and civic activists are lining up behind superintendents from Kansas and Southern California as their top choices to become the next county schools chief.
The third finalist, an administrator of Brooklyn public schools, appeared to falter during her audition this week in Upper Marlboro.
School board members, who have the final call, said they are weighing equally their three top contenders: Superintendents W.L. "Tony" Sawyer of the Topeka Public Schools, John E. Deasy of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District and Regional Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles of the New York City Department of Education.
After a three-day rollout of the finalists ended yesterday, board members were hearing little enthusiasm for Lyles from dozens of influential players invited to grill the candidates, according to interviews with participants.
"I think there's two good candidates here," said state Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George's), praising Deasy and Sawyer. "Both impressed me." Pinsky said Lyles "may not be the right match for the county at this time."
Pinsky's views echoed those of others. Several school officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they feared retribution said Lyles had not impressed them or union leaders in closed-door meetings. None said she had gained ground.
One school board member who was asked about those assessments did not dispute them. Lyles could not be reached last night for comment at a telephone number she provided to reporters.
Yet it was still possible that Lyles could emerge with the prize: leadership of the 133,000-student system, a job paying a minimum of $250,000 a year, answerable to an entire county hungry for higher-performing schools.
"The only thing I can say for the record is that the decision is open," board member Judy Mickens-Murray (Upper Marlboro) said yesterday. "The board will over the next few days make a decision."
Board Chairman Beatrice P. Tignor (Upper Marlboro), asked to handicap the contest, said she was still trying to gauge community reaction.
Sawyer, 53, had a series of public and private appearances yesterday after Monday's introduction of Deasy and Tuesday's of Lyles.
Born in Harlem, Sawyer spent most of his career as a teacher and administrator in New York. From 1999 to 2003, he oversaw 41 schools with 46,000 students as the superintendent of Manhattan high schools. He handled crises including the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which he said forced him to instantly reorganize two schools.
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.
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