The third finalist for Pinellas superintendent is the favorite for now after impressing the School Board. Two other contenders are out of the running.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published March 14, 2004
LARGO - A charismatic but controversial superintendent from Cajun country emerged Saturday as the only remaining candidate to lead Pinellas Schools.
After a two-hour interview laced with jokes, serious education talk and a promise to set "big, hairy, audacious goals" for the district, the board decided to bring 48-year-old Clayton M. Wilcox back this week for another look.
The head of Louisiana's East Baton Rouge Parish School System impressed five of the Pinellas School Board's seven members. He spoke of boosting student achievement, challenging district employees to rethink how they work, recruiting minority teachers and stepping into the media limelight to tout the district.
He also wowed a board majority with his quick wit, at one point sparring gently with Gator fan and board attorney John Bowen about who had the better football team - the University of Florida or Louisiana State University.
It didn't hurt that Wilcox recently engineered the end of a 47-year-old desegregation lawsuit, the nation's longest. Pinellas is similarly situated, having brought its own desegregation lawsuit to an end with the school choice system.
The other two candidates - Superintendent Timothy R. Jenney of Virginia Beach City Public Schools and Joseph J. Marinelli, a regional school superintendent in rural New York - were not asked back.
Wilcox will return Monday for a tour of the district, lunch with top administrators and another interview with the board.
Capping the day: an evening forum at the Gus Stavros Institute in Largo in which the board will watch to see how Wilcox fields questions from the public. Part of what they want is a new superintendent who projects well, is good in unscripted situations and can sell a sometimes wary public on the school district's mission.
The board will meet again Tuesday at 6 p.m. to decide whether to hire Wilcox or ask their search consultant for another slate of candidates.
Wilcox earns $170,000 in his current job. The Pinellas School Board has said it might be willing to pay as much as $300,000 in salary and benefits.
Although board members used words like dynamic, talented and energetic to describe the favored candidate, some voiced concerns.
Among them: East Baton Rouge is Wilcox's first superintendent's post. He has been at the job only 21/2 years. His district, with about 47,000 students, is less than half the size of the Pinellas district. And he described himself as the kind of "hands-on" top executive who will breeze into someone's office and suggest a better way.
Some board members wondered how that style, which has grated on some in Baton Rouge, would play in a district led for 14 years by the affable Howard Hinesley, who retires in December.
"I do think this will be a stretch for him professionally," said board member Nancy Bostock. But she and others called Wilcox "a rising star" with the skills and savvy to grow into the Pinellas job.
He also has previous experience in Florida as a high-level administrator for St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine.
Wilcox, a Mexican-American born and raised in Waterloo, Iowa, began his career as a middle school science teacher. He brought up his heritage Saturday to make the point that he is especially sensitive to minority concerns.
He said he does not speak Spanish because, growing up, his Mexican grandmother thought it would hold him back.
As the only Pinellas candidate with school-age children, he immediately would get a taste of the new choice system, which is unfriendly to newcomers. If hired, Wilcox' children will have missed the choice application deadline. They likely would be assigned to one of the district's less popular schools.
His fourth-grade son and second-grade daughter now attend a performing arts magnet school in Baton Rouge. Getting into a Pinellas magnet requires going through a lottery. Getting two children in at once is almost impossible under the rules.
Wilcox told the board that any school would be getting a highly active parent in his wife, Julie, a former schoolteacher.
School Board members Mary Russell and Linda Lerner expressed concerns about Wilcox. Russell said his spot-on answers left her wondering whether he was just telling board members what they wanted to hear. Lerner questioned why he would leave Baton Rouge with his work unfinished. She worried he would do the same in Pinellas.
A board majority concluded that Marinelli's job overseeing a collection of New York districts did not match the experience they wanted. As for Jenney, several board members took issue with his strong personality and chafed when he asked Friday whether there were any "untouchables" among the district's current staff.
Wilcox runs a district in which 76 percent of the students are African-American - the opposite of 25 years ago. Seventy percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches, a strong measure of poverty.
The district faces serious "white flight" to neighboring school systems. In two years, enrollment dropped by 7,000 students. An estimated 25,000 children go to private schools, one of the highest percentages in the nation.
The problems have drained the district's tax base. Faced with a $15-million deficit this year, Wilcox engineered a controversial privatization of the district's custodial and maintenance staff, which saved $6-million.
Still, he said, the district has started to close the "achievement gap" between white and black students. Ninety-seven percent of students are in schools that met guidelines under the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act, Wilcox said.
Black students have outperformed their peers across the state and nation in ACT scores, and more of them are taking advanced placement tests, he said.
He said he has opened new schools, dramatically increased the number of networked personal computers in classrooms and attracted prominent private foundations to lend money and support.
He said of his handling of the budget problems: "We can do more for children by working smarter."
Some have described his style as blunt and brash, but Wilcox told the board many others would describe him differently: "Focused, I think, direct. But I would also hope compassionate." He conceded that, for some, he is "focused to the point of distraction."
An inveterate laptop user, he said he is daily plugged into data that provide a real-time view of how the district is doing. He called it his "digital dashboard."
He might, for example, notice that the teacher absentee rate at a school is high and call the principal to address it immediately. Substitutes are fine, he said, "But I want the A-team there."
Wilcox said schools should be more friendly to parents and other visitors. He said he notices how school employees snap to attention when he walks in with a suit and tie. "We ought to jump up for everyone," Wilcox said. "In fact, you ought to jump up for the person in dungarees before you jump up for someone with the tie."
In Baton Rouge, he faces a divided school board. But how much of that division is due to him is a point of debate.
Jacqueline Mims said Saturday that Wilcox was part of the reason she resigned as board president recently after 14 years.
"He comes across as an excellent presenter," she said of Wilcox. "But I always leave wondering, "What did he really say? Did he really answer my question?' "
Another Baton Rouge board member, Janet Pace, acknowledged Wilcox is not perfect and often rubs people the wrong way. But she added: "I think he does a good job and I actually think he has gotten better at that."
