Dispute With Parents Prompts School Superintendent to Quit

Jack Price, embattled superintendent of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, has announced that he will resign, effective Friday.

For two years, Price and school board members have been locked in a bitter legal battle with a parents group seeking to keep Miraleste High School on the peninsula’s east side open. The board, acting on Price’s recommendation, voted to close the school because of declining enrollment.

More recently, Price, 58, has become the target of three candidates seeking a seat on the school board in this fall’s election. They have all said they would fire Price if elected.

“Over the past two years I have taken more personal abuse than any person--let alone a dedicated public servant with 37 years of exemplary service--should have to take,” Price said at the district’s regular board meeting Monday.

“The fact that the attacks came from a small group of people who, in my opinion, never learned to play by the rules of civilized behavior, mitigated them (the attacks) for me. But not for my family, who have become more and more subject to the same harassment.”