Miami Schools Chief to Leave Amid Discord (from NY Times)

It is so interesting how the tone of this article in the NY Times differs from those out of south Florida. Dr. Crew's challenges in Miami go far beyond the school board. I have been following the story in Miami for a while now and I have yet to hear that Dr. Crew's departure in New York was somehow connected to a dispute with then Mayor Giuliani (see below). To my knowledge, this has yet to be mentioned in South Florida. I believe that Dr. Crew, as the nation's Superintendent of the Year, is being pushed out and the process seems to have started a long time ago. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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New York Times
September 9, 2008
Miami Schools Chief to Leave Amid Discord
By DAMIEN CAVE and YOLANNE ALMANZAR
MIAMI — The Miami-Dade County School Board and Rudy Crew, the bold superintendent who came here four years ago promising to overhaul education as he did in New York City, have agreed to part ways.
The board voted Monday to begin negotiations on a severance package, capping more than a year filled with racial recriminations and rising tensions over the school budget.
“Right now we have irreconcilable differences,” the board’s chairman, Agustin J. Barrera, said at a special meeting to discuss Dr. Crew. “There are board members that, no matter what the superintendent does, will never support him.”
Dr. Crew, who did not attend Monday’s meeting, declined to comment. In an interview published Sunday in The Miami Herald, he said, “I feel like I did the best I could.”
The departure brings to a close Dr. Crew’s second stint as a big-city superintendent. He spent four years leading the New York City schools, leaving in 1999 with a mixed record after a dispute with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani over Mr. Giuliani’s desire to use tax money to send children to private school.
Dr. Crew went on to become director of district reform initiatives at the Stupski Foundation, a private philanthropic organization, and arrived in Miami in 2004. Promising to raise achievement in the nation’s fourth-largest school district, with 353,000 students, he seized control of the worst schools from local administrators and raised salaries for teachers who agreed to work in them.
He had some success. More Miami students now take Advanced Placement courses, a measure of college preparedness, and scores on state achievement tests have increased slightly but steadily in math, reading and writing since 2004.
The district initially seemed pleased. In 2006, Dr. Crew’s contract was extended through 2010, when his salary was to peak at $360,000 plus as much as $80,000 in a bonus. But over the last year, with Miami-Dade schools struggling under the strain of state budget cuts and declining enrollment, he has increasingly come under fire.
A growing mood of racial distrust has also poisoned the debate. In 2006, two members of Dr. Crew’s staff accused Ralph Arza, a white Cuban-American who was then a member of the Florida House, of using racial epithets to describe the superintendent, who is black. The episode ultimately led to Mr. Arza’s resignation from the Legislature.
Dr. Crew, meanwhile, has been accused of discrimination by several former employees, including a white woman who says she was demoted for the sake of diversity. (Dr. Crew has denied any bias.)
The volatile situation peaked at a school board meeting last week when a Hispanic member of the board severely criticized the superintendent’s proposal to balance the district’s $5.5 billion budget by reducing spending on bilingual education, prompting Dr. Crew to respond, “Do not talk to me like a dog!”
Monday’s meeting was quieter with Dr. Crew absent. But several of the board’s nine members maintained that he deserved much of the blame for what is now a $66 million budget shortfall for the 2008-9 school year. One member, Renier Diaz de la Portilla, said Dr. Crew should be fired or resign, without severance.
“I think we have an obligation to seek every possible remedy that does not involve giving Rudy Crew more money,” Mr. Diaz de la Portilla said. “We haven’t explored any other options other than giving Rudy Crew a golden parachute, and I think that’s wrong. That’s not what I was elected to do.”
A settlement seems likely, though. Murray A. Greenberg, outside counsel for the board, pointed out that Dr. Crew’s contract allowed for his firing without severance only if the district could prove “gross insubordination,” a difficult task.
Wilbert Holloway, one of the few members who support Dr. Crew, said the board and the superintendent just wanted to move on.
“I think that today’s effort is a material way of stopping and saying, ‘The time has come that we part,’ ” Dr. Holloway said. “Let’s try to stop the attacks and the charges against this individual and move forward.”