A Superintendent’s Legacy: Fostering Good Schools, Citizenship

If life is what happens while you are making other plans, what do you call it when you are able to check off every single destination on the career path you mapped out for yourself in college?

Joseph P. Spirito calls it “being blessed.”

He hopscotched from grade school, secondary and college-level classrooms to elementary and middle school principal’s offices and ended up in the Ventura Unified School District superintendent’s suite.

Spirito, who has announced plans to retire from his post in June 2001, is now mulling over his legacy. A strong advocate of character education, he brooked considerable resistance from parents and teachers with his proposal to create an “atmosphere of moral excellence and ethical behavior.” Coming up with a list of values on which everybody could agree was easy. Character traits such as honesty, punctuality, sportsmanship, cooperation and courtesy are not the stuff of controversy, even in a contemporary how-dare-you-impose-your-values-on-me culture.

The primary hurdle was that his teachers were so overwhelmed with lesson plans (they ran out of month before they ran out of curriculum requirements) that one more thing, character education, simply propelled them into overload mode and they dug in their heels.

Yet the persistent Spirito kept pushing the payoff--teach character and your job will be easier.

The initial evidence is bearing him out: Fewer kids are being suspended, there’s heaps of anecdotal evidence showing that pupils are better behaved, self-esteem is soaring as students who exemplify the character trait du jour are honored at monthly school assemblies and Ventura Unified has nabbed another coveted Golden Bell award.

Although Spirito has yet to drum up sufficient support from staff and parents for school uniforms (which he contends would improve both discipline and academics), I wouldn’t bet against him.

Mention the June 1997 passage of Ventura’s $81 million bond and the brass buttons nearly pop off Spirito’s blazer. From toilets to textbooks, Ventura Unified cried out for a mega-makeover. Yet the two-thirds majority requirement for floating a bond, which has hung up so many just as needy school districts, did not stop this one.

What was Spirito’s secret? He didn’t just jaw about buy-ins and stakeholders; he made the rounds of service organizations, churches and community groups. The residents of Ventura, who hadn’t built a new school in 30 years, gave until it hurt.

When asked to fill out a report card for education in Ventura County, Spirito, who holds teaching or administrative credentials from Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as California, gives pretty high marks across the board. He is concerned, however, with Ventura County schools not only graduating students who make their way to college or highly paid jobs but with turning out what he calls “good citizens” (see character education).

Although he applauds Gov. Gray Davis’ educational reforms, he questions the fate of kids who come from homes where there isn’t sufficient economic means or where English isn’t the primary language. Will these students be able to make it into the elite 5% to 10% who bring home college scholarships? He argues, “You can’t just do more for the haves; you also have to do more for the have-nots.”

When her husband retired as general manager of the New York Yankees in 1960, Hazel Weiss announced, “I married him for better or for worse, but not for lunch.” Mari Spirito won’t have to deal with a man underfoot, come the end of her husband’s tenure as superintendent of Ventura Unified. He proposes to embark on a E-ticket lurch through Politicsland. Destination No. 1: seat on the Ventura City Council. Destination No. 2: position on the Board of Supervisors.

That’s the plan. Now all Spirito has to do is wait and see if his second career path will be blessed as well.