Wrong guy for the job

Re “L.A. schools chief will leave job to head off fight,” Dec. 9

David L. Brewer was the wrong man for the job in the first place. The experiment of hiring a non-educator to fill an education post should end with him. A schools chief should be someone who has experienced what teachers do every day in the classroom. It should be someone who has “been there, done that” and who understands the dynamics of day-to-day concerns.

Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C. Cortines should only be considered as an interim superintendent, and a search should begin immediately for a respected, capable educator.

Clifton C. Phillips

Bellflower

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Brewer’s remarks regarding discrimination embarrass everyone in education. Does he really think the same board that hired him suddenly became racist?

My students would never use race as an excuse for a failing grade -- or the reason for a superior one.

Mark Herder

Woodland Hills

The writer is a teacher at Taft High School.

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Re “Burned by a buyout,” editorial, Dec. 9

I wish I had known Brewer before he took the superintendent job. I would have advised him against seeking or taking it. The position is impossible. It is the perfect storm of parochial interests, petty politics, ethnic and racial animosities, white flight, poverty, immigration failures, outside interference, crushing bureaucracy, incompetent managers, overwhelming and unmanageable size and a school board of nebulous ability beholden to a maze of outsiders. It was a no-win for Brewer the day he started. Now people of lesser abilities have put him into a humiliating downward spiral.

Brewer has offered the honorable thing for all concerned -- including himself -- in leaving the position. But by contract he is entitled to the severance promised, and he should not back down. It is not dishonorable to demand the full severance. The school board should have thought out Brewer’s dismissal and accomplished it quietly and without rancor, but it didn’t. Brewer should stick to his guns.

David R. Gillespie

Bonita

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That $500,000 is less than one-ten-thousandth of the LAUSD’s annual budget.

It seems a small price to pay to teach students the lesson of living up to one’s commitments.

Douglas Borsom

Pasadena