He Shakes Sacramento’s Branches for New Schools : Moorpark: Supt. Tom Duffy’s latest coup was getting $14 million to build Mesa Verde. Some wonder if the master of bureaucracy is selling curriculum and teachers short.

He is Moorpark’s man in Sacramento. Not so much a wheeler-dealer, but an insider who knows the rules when it comes to finding money for his schools.

In these times of huge state budget deficits, Moorpark School Supt. Tom Duffy, 46, has pulled more than $55 million out of Sacramento to help pay for seven of his district’s nine schools.

The latest coup was $14 million delivered for the construction of what many parents and school officials are calling the crown jewel of the district, Mesa Verde Middle School.

Perched on a ridgeline, the newly opened school boasts some of the best views in the city. Its 20-acre lot alone cost $6.5 million. The state paid for everything--for the land and the construction.

Yet, the degree of Duffy’s success is difficult to gauge precisely, because no other local district grew as quickly as Moorpark during the 1980s boom, said Ken Prosser, business services director for the county schools office. And growth is the most important factor in securing state construction money.

Only Oak Park came close to Moorpark’s fivefold student increase in recent years, Prosser said. But because Oak Park voters approved a tax hike for school construction, that district never had to depend on state funding.

“If you’re just looking at a dollars-and-cents comparison, it isn’t going to mean much,” Prosser said. “Every school district is different--different sizes and different growth rates. But if you start calling around, not just locally but statewide, and ask people who they think is the most knowledgeable about state financing, I bet they’ll mention Tom Duffy’s name.”

For a decade, Moorpark was one of the state’s fastest-growing cities. In 1988, Duffy’s first year as superintendent, school enrollment surged by 24%. Although the district is still relatively small with 6,100 students, the early growth helped Moorpark qualify for state funding--and that bolstered Duffy’s stature.

“Tom Duffy has a statewide reputation,” said Alicia Cruz, school district planning director in Poway near San Diego.

The Poway district has grown nearly as fast as Moorpark’s. But Cruz said her district, which is five times as large as Moorpark’s, received only about twice as much state construction money over the last six years.

“Tom understands the very complex process of state financing,” she said. “He knows the right people, and he’s willing to help other districts. I’ve been to several workshops that he has conducted. I think he’s a mentor for all of us.”

Although the Moorpark district receives some money from fees charged for each new house, it has relied on the state to pay for new schools partly because local voters rejected a $25.5-million bond issue in 1990.

To qualify, the district has had to show that enrollment is overtaking classroom space. Once it qualifies, the district enters a complex application process laid out in state law. A study done by Price Waterhouse of that process showed 54 steps through four separate state agencies.

“When you have a growth spurt like Moorpark did, you have to refocus your attention as superintendent,” said Shirley Carpenter, superintendent of the Pleasant Valley school district in Camarillo. “You need to be up there in Sacramento or have someone up there for you to dog these requests, or you won’t get the money.”

Duffy said he travels to Sacramento about once a month, pulling the levers of the state funding apparatus. For that, Duffy has sometimes been criticized by school board members for being out of the district too much.

Board member Clint Harper has questioned Duffy’s frequent trips to the state capital, but he does not complain much because of the results.

“I don’t know of any other district in the county that has been able to get the kind of consistent funding that we have had for new site development,” Harper said. “Quite frankly, we are in awe of his ability to get state funding.”

Board members have also wondered aloud about whether Duffy’s focus on state financing detracts from his support of teachers and an innovative curriculum for students--the true business of a school district.

“I would say curriculum is not his primary interest,” Harper said.

Richard Gillis, president of the Moorpark teachers union, declined to comment on Duffy because teachers are in protracted contract negotiations. But Gillis has previously criticized Duffy for finding construction money but not coming through for teachers, who have gone four years without a raise.

Other critics have accused Duffy of manipulating the school board.

“I think Tom Duffy is very controlling,” said Eloise Brown, a former City Council member who worked for years as a liaison between the council and the school board. “He’s an individual who feels his decisions are more valid than ones the board might make.”

Brown said that Duffy seems to purposely confuse the board members with sometimes long-winded, jargon-laden explanations of school policy. But that might be more a symptom of Duffy’s time spent working with government bureaucrats than a calculated plan, she said.

Duffy bristles at accusations that he puts students’ education second.

He insists that his search for state money has not been at the expense of classroom instruction. While he has focused on state funding, a team of administrators he picked has worked to improve curriculum, using team teaching and computer technology and providing money for creative new programs.

“We have a premier district here,” he said. “I think Moorpark has gone from being a sort of small backwater district to one of the best in the county. . . . My job is to ensure that we have the right people and the right resources. That’s what I’ve done.”

Duffy cites the district’s SAT scores, which put it in the upper 25% of schools statewide, as an example of how well students are doing. He also notes that Moorpark students won last year’s countywide academic decathlon and came in second and third the two years before that.

Duffy agrees that his strength is his business acumen. It has been that way from the beginning, he said.

He first showed an aptitude at wading through the morass of bureaucratic rules while working in the county superintendent of schools’ business office in the early 1980s, Supt. Charles Weis said.

“He entered into school administration from the business side, and I think that’s where he’s excelled,” Weis said.

Duffy worked for the county schools office part time at first, while teaching special education classes. In 1985, Moorpark hired him away as an assistant superintendent. By late 1987 he was the superintendent.

Duffy, an athletic man who still has his arm in a sling recovering from a rock-climbing accident, learned the process of state funding while getting a doctorate from USC in school administration and finance.

“I realized early on that, with the limited amount of money available after Proposition 13, I would have to learn everything I could to be successful,” he said, referring to the 1978 ballot initiative that slashed property taxes.

During this learning period Duffy has worked both in and out of government. He spent time at legislative committees that wrote school funding policy. He has also worked with other committees that made sure school funds were spent properly. And he was a professional lobbyist: He is a past chairman of the Sacramento advocacy group Coalition for Adequate School Housing (CASH), which lobbies for more state construction money.

Billions of dollars are spent building and maintaining schools in California. Many local school districts pay for construction with state bond money, which is allocated under strict rules under a 1976 law. The state Allocation Board, a panel of six legislators and other state officials, reviews the applications and decides which districts qualify for funding.

State Sen. Leroy Greene (D-Carmichael) is the chairman of the board--and Tom Duffy’s friend.

“The money only goes to where it is needed,” Greene said. “But there are a number of hoops you have to go through to qualify. Tom Duffy has been successful because he has always done his homework. He has the facts and figures and he is able to answer questions where others might stumble. The only magic he has to getting state funding is his own knowledge of the system.”

Moorpark’s pace of growth is slowing to levels on a par with other districts in the county, and school construction has also abated.

But Duffy still expects to get about $3 million next year from the state to modernize Chaparral Middle School. He also plans to build a new elementary school at old Moorpark Memorial High School. That would cost about $6 million, and Duffy expects to get half from the state and the other half by selling part of the high school campus to a developer.

“If you don’t know how to ask for the money, you’re not going to get it,” he said.

Construction Funding for Moorpark Schools

School Year built Local funds State funds Flory 1938 n/a *$200,000 Peach Hill 1984 $2.5 million $1.5 million Mountain Meadows 1987 n/a $3.5 million Campus Canyon 1988 None $5 million Arroyo West 1991 None $6.5 million Chaparral Middle School 1960 *$900,000 *$900,000 Mesa Verde Middle School 1994 None $14 million Community High School 1992 None $3 million Moorpark High School 1987-92 None $27 million

* Modernization

Source: Moorpark Unified School District