Bill Rojas

S.F. Superintendent: An Official Short-Timer

As part of its settlement with Chinese American parents, the San Francisco school district has been ordered to maintain diversity without overtly considering race, even as it faces the prospect of losing $37 million a year in desegregation funds. State officials don’t want to reimburse the district for millions it has already spent. And the schools face increasing scrutiny over test-score profiles that exclude a growing number of students, largely Chinese immigrants who speak little English.

Now, the man at the helm through all of this year’s tumultuous changes has decided to jump ship—to take a job 2,000 miles away that promises to pay twice as much.

School Board President Juanita Owens announced Tuesday night that Superintendent Bill Rojas’ contract with the San Francisco Unified School District will end between June 30 and July 31, with the board to nail down a specific date by June 15.

Rojas two weeks ago all but received a $275,000 offer to head the Dallas school system, the tenth largest district in the country. The Dallas Board of Education is expected to finalizes that offer next month.

Though Owens had rued Rojas’ imminent departure as “their gain, our loss,” Jill Wynns and Dan Kelly before Tuesday’s meeting called for Rojas’ immediate resignation, saying that he violated his contract by interviewing for a job without telling the board. In any case, his departure, as well as the outcome of the district’s other challenges, will have the greatest impact on Asian American students, who alone comprise half of the district’s 60,000 kids.

Board member Eddie Chin said before Tuesday’s meeting that “this is not a good time for Rojas to go,” given the district’s present challenges. “We need a captain of the ship to man the day-to-day operation.”

The other Asian American board member, Frank Chong, acknowledged last week that the Dallas offer was “not a total surprise” but attributed that fact to Rojas’ seven years of service, pointing out that superintendents have stayed on average only two years.

“He was brought in as a change agent, and I think he was successful,” Chong said. “The fact that he has been committed to San Francisco under intense pressure is a credit to him.”

Rojas oversaw the district’s reconsitution of poorly performing schools as well as the building of five new schools over the past five years. He cut class size in kindergarten through the third grade in 1996, a year before a state mandate went into effect. He added an extra period to the middle-school day and increased graduation requirements for high schoolers.

Yet much of those improvements were paid for with $18 million that the district thought it would get back from the state in desegregation-related funds, a fact for which Wynns and Kelly blame Rojas. State finance officials have balked, alleging that the district spent that much more than it should have known it would be reimbursed.

Chong defended the superintendent, saying that Rojas has remained committed to attacks on programs geared toward limited-English speakers.”He has been an advocate for the lower achieving students,” he said.

He also defended Rojas against criticism that he had boosted district-wide student reading and math standardized-test scores by exempting those of new, non-English speaking students. “Most of the people who work with immigrant children to whom I have spoken say there is no validity in testing kids who can’t speak English,” he said, stating that testing these students stigmatizes them and makes them feel less capable.

“It is like sending [someone] to Japan who doesn’t speak Japanese and then asking [that person] to take a high school exam in Japanese.”

The board scheduled a closed session for next week to discuss an interim replacement. Chin said a formal search will soon begin for a permanent one—a process he expects will be challenging.

“We are in competition with other districts for a limited pool of quality people who can run an urban district as large as San Francisco and can handle the problems unique to San Francisco’s diverse education system,” Chin said. “It will not be easy.”

Neither Chong nor Chin acknowledged having any particular candidate in mind. However, both said they believe an Asian American, or at least someone who is sensitive to Asian student needs, should be considered.

“I believe the administration should reflect the diversity of the students,” Chong said. “In the post consent-decree era, we need someone who understands the demographics of the student body and the city.”

Also on Tuesday, the board unanimously adopted a resolution drafted by Chin and cosponsored by Chong that directs Rojas to request that all teachers help students better appreciate the contributions of Asian Americans, in honor of next month’s national Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

“The diversity of San Francisco and especially the large API community is what makes this city great.” said board member Mary Hernandez.

Said Wynns: “We have a unique responsibility being the only large urban district with a majority Asian population. - and that it is fitting that the schools focus on the contributions of Asian Americans, as well as teach the history of APAs.”