A Mostly Easy Road for Chief of Schools

By Mitchell Landsberg

May 30, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

In the security line at the Sacramento airport, Jack O’Connell keeps seeing people he knows. Here comes a former finance chief for Gov. Gray Davis. There’s a former assemblyman and mayor of Sacramento.

Kicking off his black-tasseled loafers, O’Connell passes through the metal detector. At the gate for the Southwest Airlines flight to Santa Ana, more friends: a prominent political strategist. An assistant to the state education secretary.

O’Connell, who is running for reelection as state superintendent of public instruction, is in his element. It’s an airport, and few people know California’s airports better than he does. And it’s Sacramento, where he has been in the thick of political life for more than two decades.

He appears unflappable even when the subject turns -- as it inevitably does in every social encounter these days -- to the one issue overshadowing O’Connell’s job as the state’s top education official and his less-than-stressful campaign.

“How’s Doree?” people keep asking, a reference to his wife of more than 25 years, who recently underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor.

“Doin’ better,” he’ll say, and give the thumbs-up sign.

If it weren’t for his wife’s illness, these would be happy days for O’Connell. As he heads into the June 6 election, his opposition consists of three high school teachers and a retired school superintendent who have failed to attract the money or political support needed to mount an effective statewide campaign. The only political insider to consider the race, Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Roseville), backed out after concluding that he couldn’t win.

And after several years of laboring in relative obscurity -- at least, for someone whose job involves setting overall policy for the largest statewide educational system in the country -- O’Connell has lately been in the national spotlight as a defender of California’s high school exit exam.

Boarding the plane, the nearly 6-foot-4 O’Connell settles into a front-row seat after determining that savvy passengers have already snagged his favorite spot in an exit row. Few people travel around California as much as O’Connell, who frequently has days like this one -- with visits to a Northern California school in the morning and a Southern California school in the afternoon, meetings along the way and a political fundraiser in the evening.

Leaning back in his leather seat, he insists that the exit exam, which he sponsored as a state senator in 1999 and has championed as superintendent, is just “one of many accomplishments” in the last 3 1/2 years. He says he has maintained high standards of student accountability, pushed “career and technical education” -- the modern version of vocational classes -- and tried to reduce the “achievement gap” that occurs when poor students, especially African Americans and Latinos, perform at levels below those of affluent students, especially whites and Asian Americans.

It is hard to find anyone who personally dislikes O’Connell, who exudes down-to-earth warmth and self-deprecating humor. (During a high school visit, he approaches a student wearing earphones and asks what he’s listening to. “Jazz,” the student says. “I knew it wasn’t my last speech because you’re still awake,” O’Connell says.)

And, for the most part, his educational initiatives have won bipartisan support.

Although the post of superintendent is nonpartisan and typically has been held by educators, not politicians, O’Connell is a Democrat who served for 20 years in the Legislature, as both an assemblyman and senator representing the Central Coast.

Still, he is praised by some Republicans for his dogged defense of the exit exam -- which was challenged in court, thrown out by a judge and then reinstated last week by the state Supreme Court. This year for the first time the exam is a requirement for graduation from public high school in California. Democrats support him as an effective superintendent who has spoken out about the need to increase funding for education, especially for struggling students in poor urban communities.

State Sen. Jack Scott (D-Pasadena), a former president of Pasadena City College who heads the Senate Education Committee, said he supported O’Connell because he has been “a very, very strong advocate for increasing funding for the schools, but also for educational reform.”

Still, O’Connell has his critics.

The exit exam has angered many educators, parents and, of course, students -- especially the roughly 10% of high school seniors who haven’t passed the test and might not receive their diplomas in June. (Some of them have not yet received their scores from the last time the exam was administered.)

Conservatives have complained that O’Connell is too beholden to teachers unions, which have been strong supporters of his campaigns. And there are those who say that while O’Connell might be affable, he is someone you might hire to renovate a home, not rebuild its foundations.

“We’re not doing what’s good for education,” said Grant McMicken, a math teacher in the Sacramento area and one of the candidates running against O’Connell. “We need to make some changes. And if Jack O’Connell is going to do the same thing that he’s done for the last 3 1/2 years, the changes are not going to happen.

“If he wins,” McMicken added, “he’s going to win because he has a huge, well-oiled political machine.”

Another challenger, Sarah Knopp, who teaches at Youth Opportunities Unlimited Alternative High School in South Los Angeles, is sharply critical of the exit exam and the emphasis on standardized testing in general, and has said that O’Connell should be doing more to change the way schools are funded.

“We are 49th in the country in terms of class size. And we are worst in the country in terms of counselors [per pupil],” she said. “And what I think the superintendent should be doing is helping to organize parents, students and teachers to speak out and organize for real funding reform in California schools instead of pretending that standardized testing is going to fix the problem.”

Diane Lenning, a high school teacher in the Garden Grove Unified School District and the lone Republican in the race, said she approves of O’Connell’s handling of the exit exam but believes he should give districts more autonomy and focus more attention on making schools safe.

She also said class sizes should be smaller, even if it means increasing the size of lower grades -- now fixed at 20 pupils per class -- in order to create a lower overall average throughout elementary and middle schools.

But Lenning, an active teachers union member, acknowledged that it would be tough for her to counter the “support that the incumbent has already gotten from the unions.”

O’Connell’s fourth opponent is Dan Bunting, a retired teacher and school superintendent who serves on the school board in the small Sonoma County town of Cloverdale. With over 50 years in education, Bunting says, he has experience that O’Connell, who taught for several years before beginning his political career, lacks.

He called for efforts to engage parents, especially immigrants, in their children’s education and said he would be more of a presence in the state.

“Jack O’Connell -- he’s a nice guy, really nice, but he’s not visible. He says he goes all around the state, but he only goes to the big districts,” Bunting said.

Back on the plane, O’Connell is gazing out the window, pointing out familiar sights as the flight passes over the Central Coast, where he has spent most of his life. He still lives in San Luis Obispo and flies home almost every weekend. There’s Lompoc, he says, and Guadalupe Dunes. There’s Jack O’Connell Park, and over there, Jack O’Connell Highway -- both tributes to his work in the Legislature.

He looks down at Oxnard, where he grew up after his family moved from New York, literally following the Dodgers (his father, setting a standard for devotion to a sports team, sold his business and headed west when the team announced it was relocating from Brooklyn to Los Angeles).

The day had begun shortly after 8 a.m. with a meeting in his Sacramento office with the Tri-County Education Coalition, representing educators in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. O’Connell spoke about the “three new Rs: rigor, relevance and relationships.” There was a high school visit in Sacramento, then on to Raley Field, home of the minor league Sacramento Rivercats baseball team, to throw out the first pitch in front of a crowd of schoolchildren who were being rewarded for improved attendance.

Then a meeting at the state Capitol with Sen. Scott, and off to the airport for the trip south. In Santa Ana, he would visit the Orange County High School of the Arts, then attend a campaign dinner that would raise $25,000 from a dozen deep-pocketed supporters.

Then the airport and the flight back to Sacramento, arriving at 10 p.m. A typical day.

But the high point had been back at Raley Field, where, after downing a hot dog and warming up his arm, O’Connell stepped to the mound to throw out what the announcer called the “ceremonial first pitch.”

Without much ceremony, he wound up and threw. It was a clean toss, floating through the air before dipping slightly into the catcher’s mitt. A perfect strike.

“A sinker,” O’Connell aide Rick Miller said, watching from the front row. He smiled. “That was nice.”