Handler Leaves Us Hope

Harry Handler retires today after six years as the Los Angeles school superintendent. He leaves the district, with its 590,000 students, in better shape than it was when he took over. He also leaves his successor hope, because Handler has shown that it’s possible to manage the unmanageable.

Reading scores are rising, and mathematics scores are close to the national average. Students learn more because Handler extended the school day to six periods and led the way for all California school districts by extending the school year.

He saw to it that all students started school with a permanent teacher. It may sound like a small achievement, but before he changed the hiring process, children in as many as 200 classes, primarily in South-Central Los Angeles and East Los Angeles, started out with substitute teachers and often saw only substitutes for an entire term.

For Handler, the school principal was crucial to the tone and the spirit of a school, and he replaced more than 50 who were not up to his standards.

Handler’s most enduring legacy may be a school board that works in harmony. He inherited a contentious board, still wrangling over desegregation. In his soft-spoken and reserved manner he persuaded the board to put rancor aside.

This is not to say that there are no problems left for Leonard Britton, the well-regarded new superintendent from Dade County, Fla. Britton, who will start work Wednesday, faces problems typical of big-city districts--too little money, too few classrooms, a high dropout rate and low teacher morale--despite a recent 10% pay raise. But at least he faces them with hope, based on Handler’s record, that a strong and patient superintendent, with help from a school board that works together, can manage the unmanageable.