John Deasy was hired last week to run Prince George’s County Public Schools in Washington D.C.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education members will meet behind closed doors this Thursday to decide how to replace Superintendent John Deasy, who resigned last week to take charge of a suburban Washington D.C. school district.
Former Malibu High School principal Mike Matthews is being mentioned by some Malibu parents as a likely replacement, but board members said a public search for a new superintendent is necessary to make sure the best replacement possible is found.
Deasy, 45, was hired last week to run Prince George’s County Public Schools, a 133,000-student district in the Maryland suburbs southwest of Washington. That district, the 18th largest in the nation, is described as troubled by management woes and wide gaps in student achievement between rich and poor neighborhood schools.
Deasy’s jump to Prince George’s County made the front page of The Washington Post. Post columnist Courtland Milloy said Deasy faces a steep learning curve in a school district with a $1 billion budget and a publicly stated preference to hire superintendents who match the 75 percent black population.
Deasy will be paid more than $250,000 in Maryland, up from the $153,000 salary plus bonuses here. Officials noted that Deasy never claimed the two performance bonuses he had earned at SMMUSD, preferring to leave the money in the school bankbooks.
“I think Dr. Deasy was an excellent superintendent for many reasons,” said Malibu High PTA President Heather Anderson. “He really made the district examine itself in a critical way, in matters such as the achievement gap that was leaving many students behind.”
Parents noted Deasy’s move to address inequities in parent funding for schools in affluent and poor areas as a keystone in his administration. Deasy wrote the school board policy that donations to the district are subject to an equity fund assessment that takes 9 percent of unrestricted donations and distributes them on a weighted scale throughout the school district.
“The equity fund issue made us examine our responsibility to all of our schools in the district, some that are a lot less fortunate than we are,” Anderson said.
But a vocal minority of Malibu parents strongly objected.
“He called it social justice, other parents called it socialism or communism,” said Malibu parent Sonia Ottusch.
“That was a real change that was very divisive to our community,” she added.
Deasy also upset Spanish-speaking parents in Santa Monica on several issues, including his insistence that two parent liaison jobs at Santa Monica High School be replaced with bilingual college graduates.
“Any great leader will sometimes aggravate some segments of the community,” said Kathy Wisnicki, the lone member of the SMMUSD board from Malibu, which makes up 20 percent of the district population.
Deasy’s departure leaves the 14,000-student SMMUSD with 10 schools that uniformly score between very good and excellent on state achievement measurements. The school board has not yet decided on the need for an interim superintendent.
“John is still the superintendent and is still working for us in a full-time capacity for a few weeks,” said Board president Julia Brownley.
Matthews, a 14-year veteran of the Santa Monica-Malibu School District, remains popular among Malibu parents and former students who remember him as principal and teacher at Malibu High. Matthews was promoted to assistant superintendent two years ago.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Mike Matthews,” said teachers union president Harry Keiler, who taught with Matthews at Malibu High for several years. “He has the mind and he has the heart that’s necessary to be effective in our schools.”
“Mike Matthews is a very likely candidate, I think they should absolutely consider him,” said parent volunteer Karen Farrer.
“I admire the fact that while he was the principal he still taught a class, so he didn’t lose touch with what teachers do, and he didn’t lose touch with what students do,” said Farrer, who sits on the district PTA council.
Board members Brownley and Wisnicki both said Matthews is a strong administrator, but said it would be premature to comment on the board’s intentions. “We are going to do a search, and we will talk about that this week,” Brownley said.