After 1 Year in Office, Doubts Cloud Charisma of Supt. George McKenna : Chasing Elusive Dreams

Some of those on the selection committee for Inglewood’s new school superintendent still remember when George J. McKenna III--fresh from a television movie and White House visit--first entered the interview room last summer.

“When he walked in I could see the mouths drop open,” said Terry Coleman, one of those present. “He was debonair. He was dressed to kill. People looked at him like he was the Messiah.”

Another committee member, Mildred McNair, said: “I felt like we had a Hollywood figure in the room. . . . We tend to look at anyone in a movie as a Hollywood star, and we can’t look at them as a normal person.”

A year has passed since McKenna left the rejuvenated Washington Preparatory High School in South-Central Los Angeles and took the reins of a school system beset with political infighting, low test scores and deteriorating campuses.

When he took over the $80,000-a-year post heading the Inglewood Unified School District, McKenna was basking in praise and nationwide attention, including a made-for-television movie called “The George McKenna Story,” which chronicled his successful efforts at Washington Prep.

Ahead of him in the county’s 13th-largest school district, however, was a rocky educational road lined with a powerful teachers’ union, a contentious school board and parents fed up with the district’s poorly run schools.

Those who selected McKenna, those who work with him, those whose children he supervises, generally agree that one year is too short a time to raise a district’s test scores, repair disintegrating buildings and set up a new system for educational excellence. But as McKenna begins the process, resistance is developing among some who say that underneath his star quality is an inexperienced administrator who demands too much and negotiates too little.

McKenna, in his first superintendent’s job after a decade as a principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District, says he’s ready for the challenge and has heard all the criticism before.

“I expect disbelievers to surface,” he said of his first year. “There are more disbelievers out there than there are believers. I know that. I expect anyone trying to make major, systemic change in public institutions to face major resistance.”

It’s 9:15 a.m. and McKenna is alone in the center of the Inglewood High School gym as several hundred students eye him from the bleachers on either side.

“Life to some of us is not as important as it should be,” he bellows into the microphone. “Trust me, there is no gang-bangers’ heaven. If there were, it would have bars on it.”

His voice rises and falls at just the right moments. He knows what the audience wants, and needs, to hear. He strides back and forth as he speaks, waving his arm for emphasis. At the end comes wild applause.

Whether on television’s “Nightline,” at an educational meeting in Lexington, Ky., or in a high school gym, McKenna’s power is in his tongue, those who work with him say. Even his critics acknowledge how McKenna motivates, inspires, impassions, when he has a microphone in his hand. It’s in the nuts and bolts of the superintendent’s job that some critics and supporters say McKenna needs work.

“McKenna is a visionary,” said board member Zyra McCloud. “He’s an orator, a motivator. But in terms of running a school district, McKenna is a rookie, very inexperienced, very weak. He doesn’t always listen to good advice from board members, parents, administrators and teachers. I’m still waiting for results.”

Board member Thomasina Reed added: “For someone who has no experience for a superintendent, he is doing a reasonably good job. If he had more experience, he would be doing a better job. He has some impressive and perhaps unattainable goals.”

McKenna, 49, a New Orleans native who holds a bachelor’s degree from Xavier University, a master’s degree in mathematics from Loyola University of Chicago and an honorary doctorate from Xavier, admits that he gets frustrated with some aspects of the job.

“One of my weaknesses is I try to do too many things simultaneously,” he said earlier this month from the district offices on South Inglewood Avenue. “I may not have the resources to finish or the people to carry it through. . . . When you make a speech or write a bulletin, it doesn’t mean all the schools will change overnight. It won’t happen. You have to spend time. And sometimes with minutiae. Minutiae, that’s my frustration.”

Getting along with an often tumultuous school board is another challenge. School trustees frequently question the superintendent’s proposals at board meetings, which can stretch to eight hours or more.

“I doubt that he realized it would be this tough to get along with the board,” said Larry Aubry, board president. “You have five personalities and five agendas. It’s his job to balance them.”

The last Inglewood superintendent didn’t succeed at that.

McKenna was first offered the Inglewood job in 1985, when a three-member board majority aligned with Mayor Edward Vincent fired then-Supt. Rex Fortune. He was rehired six weeks later after a community uproar. McKenna said he declined the 1985 offer because of the divided board. When Fortune resigned in July, 1988, McKenna said the political climate had changed.

McKenna’s chief critics during his first year have been the teachers, who have been working for more than a year without a contract. Members of the Inglewood Teachers Assn. call McKenna authoritarian and anti-teacher for his hard-line stance during the contract talks.

Beginning salaries for Inglewood’s teachers last year--$22,614--ranked 25th out of the 43 unified districts in Los Angeles County for those with bachelor’s degrees and 30th for those with master’s degrees, according to county education statistics. Earlier this month, teachers turned down the district’s offer of a 2.5% salary increase for the 1988-89 year; the union wants 14%.

The union also says McKenna is quick to send memos to teachers but is slow to involve them in decisions.

Wayne Johnson, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, says similar criticisms were leveled against McKenna during his 10 years at Washington Prep.

“George was very demanding, very authoritarian,” Johnson said. “It really had to be done George’s way. There was very little collaboration with the faculty. It was George’s way or the highway, as we used to say.”

Of the 142 teachers he first worked with at Washington, 122 moved elsewhere during his tenure, Los Angeles union officials said.

Cheryl Bell, the vice president of the Inglewood union, says morale among her colleagues could not be lower. Many are looking to Los Angeles and other districts to escape the low pay, deteriorated classrooms, lack of supplies and now, she said, a lack of respect from the superintendent.

“I would give him a poor grade--a low D,” said union president Ervin Drayden. “I think we had high expectations. We hoped he would come in and work with the teachers. The teachers think they have gotten the short end of the stick.”

McKenna disagreed with the characterization that he is anti-teacher, but emphasized that it is his job to run the schools.

Even McKenna critics say the teachers’ union has become too powerful in Inglewood. After a brief walkout in 1987, the union gained a 14% raise over two years that has been blamed for the district’s budget crunch the next year.

“Teachers should get more money,” McKenna said, “but the question is, ‘Where does it come from?’ The second question is, ‘After we give them the money, what commitment do we get in return?’ ”

Money is a problem for the district, which had to cut $3 million from its $44-million general fund budget for 1988-89 and is struggling back toward financial health. The current $47-million budget restores several top-level positions eliminated during those cuts.

His first year, McKenna said, was spent presenting his educational mission to the community and laying the groundwork for it. McKenna’s goals are ambitious: turning upside down a system that he says is not designed for disadvantaged youngsters.

He wants parents at every school maintaining order, teachers judged on performance just like everybody else, students not slipping through the cracks. Inglewood has about 720 teachers and an enrollment of more than 15,900 students--54% black, 43% Latino, 2% white and 1% others.

McKenna has sent contracts to homes that outline the district’s expectations for both parents and students. A memo also went out to principals and teachers outlining McKenna’s standards.

Although some of McKenna’s staff choices have won praise--like his appointment of the district’s only Latino principal--others have met resistance.

At a school board meeting in August, dozens of community members protested McKenna’s selections of new principals and assistant principals. They said he had vowed to clean house and then simply shuffled the current administrators, missing his first big chance to improve the schools.

During that meeting, an angry McKenna told the board: “If I cannot make the district function, you can with three votes find yourself another superintendent.” When tempers cooled, the board approved all but three of the superintendent’s choices.

Earlier this month, residents crowded into another meeting to complain about severe scheduling problems at Morningside High School, where the principal and assistant principals were replaced by McKenna in August.

When school opened, some classes had more than 100 students, others had 10 or fewer. Even two months into the school year, many student schedules have not been worked out. Whereas administrators blame the situation on computer problems, critics say last-minute staff changes caused the chaos.

“I don’t think he’s made the progress people expected, and I don’t see it in the near future,” said W. R. (Tony) Draper, a former board member. “Morningside is an example of the confusion that has occurred during his first year.”

Everyone wants to see if the district’s lagging test scores will improve under McKenna. The district traditionally finishes in the bottom third in the county for all grade levels in the California Assessment Program. In 1988-89, 12th-grade reading and math scores were lower than 98% of the districts across the state.

“This district has been floundering for a long time, and now we’re asking for a new direction,” said Joseph Rouzan, board vice president. “The problems are not going anywhere overnight. You put out one fire, and another one starts.”

Vincent, a former school board president who frequently grumbles about how the district is run, concurred. “He came to a very difficult situation, and he is trying to put the pieces together,” the mayor said. “I think it is unfair to castigate him. He has inherited a bad situation.”

Coleman, a member of the Inglewood PTA-Council, said people “thought McKenna had the magic wand when he came in. They’re realizing now that he’s human. I’m not pleased with his first year. I’m still waiting for action.”

Aubry said everyone will expect more from McKenna during his second year. “In a way, it’s been like an extended honeymoon. That will end soon. At that point, the training situation is over.”

McNair, a longtime Inglewood resident who works in the Los Angeles schools, is even tougher on McKenna. “If he thinks we’ll continue to pat him on the back in Inglewood, he can forget it,” she said.

McKinley Nash, superintendent of Centinela Valley Union High School District, which covers Lawndale, Hawthorne and Lennox, says McKenna’s first year has gone according to schedule.

“Leadership itself illicits critique and criticism,” Nash said. “The superintendent who has little or no criticism is not leading anywhere. McKenna should have a high enough threshold that he is not bothered by the criticism.”

McKenna, who has a contract through the 1990-91 school year, says he is on track to meet his goal of revamping Inglewood’s schools in three years. That goal stands despite all he has learned about the hurdles a superintendent must leap.

“I’ve learned that you can’t take this job too seriously,” McKenna said. “You can take the concepts and the philosophies very seriously. But I always remember that superintendents have committed suicide, superintendents have dropped dead on the job, superintendents have lost their families and gotten divorced (while) fighting over issues that they should have been able to ease off on.”