New Schools Chief Stays on Front Line
Alexandria Taps Problem-Solver

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 4, 2008

He began the article: "Dear Tom Cruise: I want you to meet my daughter."

Morton Sherman described a popular, active girl who struggled with depression and tried to kill herself at 15. He wrote that even as a school superintendent married to a special education teacher, he and his wife could not stop the sophomore. They wondered what they had done wrong.

"When a child breaks a leg, we put a cast on it. When we have a headache, we take aspirin. When the flu season starts to break out, we all run for shots," Sherman wrote. "So must it be for the mental health of our children."

A personal appeal to those like Cruise -- who has criticized psychiatry and the use of antidepressants -- Sherman's 2006 article in an American Association of School Administrators magazine gives insight into the New Jersey schools chief named Monday as Alexandria's superintendent. His criticism of the education system's ability to deal with mental health fits with his reputation as an administrator who jumps to the front lines of issues.

Alexandria School Board member Yvonne A. Folkerts interviewed 40 people in Tenafly, N.J., about Sherman before he was hired.

"They said to me, 'I hope you guys are ready,' " she said. "They said, 'The only thing we had to ask him was to slow down a little bit because we couldn't keep up.' "

In a unanimous vote, the board awarded Sherman, 58, a contract for $250,000 a year through June 2012. He replaces Rebecca L. Perry, who left in January. Sherman begins Aug. 15.

Board members praised Sherman for raising academic standards and narrowing achievement gaps. They described an administrator who gets to know teachers and students and has made board members promise to host get-togethers for him to meet the community.

Sherman, superintendent in Tenafly since December 2005 and before that in Cherry Hill, N.J., for eight years, doesn't deny that he's the type to answer e-mails at 3 a.m. He's also not shy about reaching out to broad audiences. After a threat appeared on a Tenafly school door, Sherman appeared on a daytime talk show about school bullying. He also joined other superintendents recently in signing a letter opposing the Challenge Index that Washington Post reporter Jay Mathews uses to rank high schools.

"If [Alexandria is] looking for someone who is going to look at what's happening and examine it and look for ways to improve it, they've got their man," said Lynn Trager, assistant superintendent in Tenafly.

Trager also was a principal in the South Orangetown School District in New York when Sherman was superintendent there from 1992 to 1997.

"Every decision he makes is with each individual student in mind," Trager said. "Every meeting you have with him, he asks the question: 'How will that impact the students?' And you have to be ready to talk about that."

Patricia McCargo recalled meeting Sherman when he started at Cherry Hill. She had been one of only six African American students in the district and had children in the system when Sherman arrived. She said he listened to her concerns, ranging from the lack of minority teachers to the difficulty parents faced in placing their children in advanced classes, and he created a minority achievement committee that she still helps lead.

"No concern was too big or too small for him," McCargo said. "Sometimes I would call, and I always knew if he didn't get back to me that day, it would be a day or two. I never had to call back in a week or so and say, 'Hey, did you forget me?' "

Tenafly, in northern New Jersey, has about 3,500 students in six schools, compared with Alexandria's 10,600 students in 17. It is also less diverse than Alexandria, with about 65 percent white students and nearly 30 percent Asian American. In Alexandria, about 40 percent of students are black, about 25 percent Hispanic and 25 percent white.

Sherman, who began teaching 37 years ago in Philadelphia, said Alexandria's diversity attracted him. He said he is the son of a working-class mechanic who never went to high school but made sure his five sons did. Sherman keeps a picture of his father's 1938 tow truck on his office wall.

"It reminds me of the lessons my parents taught me," he said. Sherman's educational philosophy, that every child can learn, comes from family experience. When his three daughters were young, Sherman said, he tried to teach them to eat rice with a fork one night. He grew increasingly frustrated as the grains missed their mouths. Then his wife offered them spoons.

"It's a true story," Sherman said. "The philosophy is you don't give up on giving children nutrition. You just have to find the right tool."

His daughter Rachel, now healthy and in her 20s, is the one who tried to kill herself. Sherman said that afterward his family went into denial and had a hard time talking about it, even with relatives. Then they began to speak openly about it at schools, with lawmakers and in published pieces.

"What we have learned is that many families and schools follow the 'suck it up' mentality that we hear on late-night talk shows or they follow narrow, uniformed and dangerous conventional wisdom," Sherman wrote in the article addressed to Cruise. "As educational leaders, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead the conversation forward in our schools and communities."