This week, Pinellas School Board members visit Clayton Wilcox in Baton Rouge, La. Here's what they might find.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published April 5, 2004
[Times photos: Willie Allen Jr.]
Clayton Wilcox, left, shares a laugh and a conference call with members of his leadership team in Baton Roug, La., last week.
After a day of work at the office, school visits, meetings with architects, staff development and the trip to soccer practice,Wilcox sits at home in his kitchen with Tanner, left, daughter Morgann, 7, and wife, Julie.
Tanner, 10, and his dad, Clayton Wilcox, leave the soccer practice field as dusk falls on Baton Rouge, La., last week.
BATON ROUGE, La. - Small reminders dot the world of Clayton M. Wilcox, the Iowa-born administrator who hopes to be Pinellas County's next school superintendent.
One is the gold angel pin he wears most days on the left lapel of his dark tailored suits. It reminds him of his third child, Hannah, who was stillborn in 1998. He thinks of her grave in an Iowa cemetery, of how her death tested and strengthened his marriage, and of the treasures he still has.
It's the reminder that sends him home each night to his wife, Julie, and their two children, Tanner and Morgann, ages 10 and 7, and an ailing 16-year-old golden retriever named Bailey.
The other reminders keep him late at the office and draw him - after soccer practice and bedtime - to his home computer in the all-consuming job of running an embattled Louisiana school district.
Last week at the headquarters of the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Wilcox pointed to an old electrical contraption at the School Board's meeting table. Until recently, board presidents used it to keep track of who wanted to speak.
"Look at this," said the 48-year-old superintendent, who this week entertains seven Pinellas County School Board members trying to decide whether they want to make him their top administrator.
After taking over in Baton Rouge more than two years ago, Wilcox replaced the dated technology around the board table. But the contraption stayed - his personal reminder of a time when district leaders were "asleep at the switch."
"All I do is look there and say, "We're not going there again,' " said Wilcox, who is Teddy Roosevelt charging up the hills of education, trying to stoke the same passion in others. He's at his desk most days by 7:15 a.m.
Pinellas officials visiting Baton Rouge Tuesday and Wednesday want to see how his energy and education IQ translate into workaday public policy. But his personal side also is emerging as a factor.
If hired this month, Wilcox figures to add some humor and animation to the reserved public profile of the area's civic elite.
A Mexican-American born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, he has worked as an assistant coach for a small college basketball team and president of a local teachers union.
He is a huge fan of Albert Einstein, the arts and college sports. Watching a dance practice recently at Gibbs High School in St. Petersburg, he grew misty-eyed at the racial mix and talent of the student performers, telling an audience later, "It was marvelous. It was magical."
A polished yet casual presence in public, Wilcox might refer to something as "cool" or to someone as "an interesting cat." The Pinellas job, he told staffers last week, could be his new "gig."
He signs his e-mails "Clayt," which is what some people call him.
As he drove across his district last week wearing Ray-Bans in an Acura SUV, people around town knew him instantly as the high-profile figure they've seen on television news.
He favors directness over the coded, roundabout language used by many education officials. He has a barbed and slightly offbeat sense of humor. Asked last month at a public reception whether he would work with PTAs in Pinellas, Wilcox deadpanned: "No." The crowd was in stitches.
But in the heat of the work day, a serious edge pops through.
At quitting time Wednesday, Wilcox pointedly noted how one administrator was sometimes late to work, but always out the door by 4:30 p.m.
He refers to less energized colleagues as "adults who profess to care for kids."
He bristles when his staff speaks of "minority" students, reminding them that black children make up 76 percent of the public school enrollment in Baton Rouge.
And he laments the kind of malaise that kept the board table contraption in use for so long and allowed much larger problems - including rotting school buildings and low student achievement - to fester.
He pushes those around him to care more, work harder and think bigger.
"I say to my administrators, "You've got to show me what you'll die for professionally.' "
A rising star
The junior metropolis of Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Iowa - population 128,000 - is surrounded by a vast patchwork of corn and bean fields, still brown in the early spring.
Under leafless trees and gray skies, the wide and well-kept streets of Cedar Falls have a spare Midwestern charm.
Anita Wilcox, 70, still lives in the small home on California Street where her son Clayton grew up, the oldest of three children.
"He likes a challenge, and he likes to see it through, but then he's looking for another challenge," she says, musing about the traits that may propel her son to a new job in Florida.
Upstairs is the cozy loft bedroom where he once read for hours. The slanted roof is still lined in knotty pine, the floor covered in shag.
Just beyond the back yard is Cedar Heights Elementary, where Wilcox, his brother Chris and sister Catherine attended school, played basketball, went sledding and skated on the tennis courts that were flooded in the winter.
Their father, C. Clayton Wilcox, owned a service station in town and died in 1989. The family's Mexican heritage came from Anita, whose father worked his way from Mexico to Chicago on the railroad, finally becoming a boilermaker and settling in Oelwein, Iowa, about 50 miles northeast of Cedar Falls.
Unschooled himself, Wilcox's grandfather pushed family members to get educations and told them never to speak Spanish outside the home.
"He basically had the family sacrifice its heritage in some ways in order for us to not be viewed as second-class citizens," said Wilcox, who does not speak Spanish but is a regular at Baton Rouge's Superior Grill, where the Mexican rice and chicken soup are just like his grandmother's.
He brought up his Mexican heritage recently in Pinellas, saying it makes him sensitive to the concerns of minorities. His father's side of the family is German, English, Dutch and a little Scottish, according to Anita Wilcox.
One of Mrs. Wilcox's brothers became a vice president of Upper Iowa University. Another became a principal. She went to a small business school, worked for a bank, raised her children and later retired as a teaching assistant at a school for disabled students.
She remembers that her oldest son talked nonstop during kindergarten rest time, once invited his second-grade teacher to lunch, easily made friends and never shied from adults.
Jim Zimmer, a coach and physical education teacher, planted the teaching bug when Wilcox was in middle school.
"I don't think he remembers that exact day but I remember it," Wilcox said. "He thought that I had all the skills to become a teacher. He said to me, "You'll never know the joy that I know until you teach.' "
Zimmer, now retired, said Wilcox stood out as a personable kid who was easy to be around.
Clayton Michael Wilcox, Class of 1974, is mentioned or pictured nine times in his senior yearbook at Cedar Falls High, where he played football, became a "cadet" teacher of younger students, served in student government and was one of those kids who made friends across different cliques.
One of his few transgressions: an ear-bursting ride down a school hallway on his motorcycle. The principal found out later.
Who knew that, 30 years hence, some would call him a "rising star" among the Ph.D. who head America's school districts?
Thinking he might become a lawyer, Wilcox spent a year and a half at Drake University in Omaha, Neb. But heeding Zimmer's advice, he returned to Cedar Falls to earn a bachelor's degree in teaching at the University of Northern Iowa.
He taught in the Waterloo Community School District for 12 years, earning good evaluations as a low-key teacher who kept control of his classes and expected his students to perform.
The only blemish on his record came in 1982 when he was a 26-year-old teacher and coach. On the way home from a party after midnight, Wilcox was charged with driving while intoxicated. He pleaded guilty, paid a fine, served a year's probation and had his license suspended temporarily.
He made Pinellas School Board members aware of it recently.
"That was a wakeup call for me that I wasn't a kid anymore," Wilcox said. "I had responsibilities to others."
Four years later, he married a fellow teacher, Julie Untiedt.
In the early 1990s, after becoming president of the teacher's union in Waterloo, Wilcox started his career in school administration. He became an assistant principal, then an elementary school principal and finally an official in the district's human resources department.
In recent interviews, many of his old colleagues mentioned his personable ways and ready sense of humor.
"It's real," said Don Hanson, a retired Waterloo schools official, referring to the earnest talk of helping kids that has some in Pinellas asking whether Wilcox is genuine.
"We were adversaries on paper, but I would trust Clayton," said Hanson, who negotiated with Wilcox when Wilcox was a union chief. "He didn't come to the bargaining table with a bunch of crap. He laid it out as it was. He didn't play games."
Same number of zeros
On bad days when it seems no one is following him the way he would like, Wilcox heads for the large computer room at district headquarters in Baton Rouge. There, he revels in the gadgetry and rubs shoulders with his beloved technology staff.
"They're these people who have this real can-do attitude," he says amid the hum of giant Dell computers.
At least on the technology front, Pinellas would see a significant change in leadership style if the School Board hires Wilcox.
After 14 years as superintendent, Howard Hinesley does not have a computer at his desk and communicates in memos dictated to his administrative assistant. His cell phone number is not widely available.
Wilcox, in contrast, is easily reached on his cell. He sends and receives scores of e-mails each day. The computer at his desk is his "digital dashboard" to what's going on across the district.
And unlike Hinesley and other educators who frequently bemoan the federal No Child Left Behind Act as unreasonbly harsh, Wilcox embraces the law as a much-needed kick in the pants for American education.
He said he and his wife want to move to Florida. But he is puzzled by the comments of two board members, Linda Lerner and Mary Russell, who have questioned his readiness to lead a larger district.
"Of all this process, that's the one piece that's kind of stuck with me the most," Wilcox said last week over an enchilada at the Superior Grill. "What are you really saying - that I'm not smart enough? If that's what you think, then say that."
He noted that his budget is about $500-million compared with $1.2-billion for Pinellas.
"Same number of zeros," Wilcox said. "If I can do it with this district, why can't I do it with that one?"
Superintendent snatchers
Fifteen people on Wilcox's "district leadership team" are gathered around the conference table at school headquarters in Baton Rouge.
In Pinellas, Wilcox has touted the diversity of his staff.
On this team, six are African-Americans. Two, including Wilcox, are Hispanic. Seven are women. Another black member of the team is at a meeting elsewhere.
Many of them are worried that the aggressive program of change launched by Wilcox will lose momentum if he leaves.
One group in town refers to the Pinellas board as the "superintendent snatchers." Some locals are irritated that Pinellas has left Baton Rouge in limbo since March 13, when Wilcox emerged as the lone candidate to succeed Hinesley.
Others blame Wilcox for wanting to leave amid ambitious plans to build new schools and boost student performance.
His brief tenure also has resulted in less publicized changes. He has banned corporal punishment, branding it as violence, and tried to establish a culture that questions old methods.
"It's amazing to me how people just don't ever ask, "Well, how come?' " Wilcox says.
During a visit to one high school last week, he darts into a boys' restroom to see if the toilets are flushed and the floors free of paper towels. Had it been dirty, he would have told the principal to call the custodian. Had the custodian been busy, he would have asked the principal to take care of it.
"They don't like that," Wilcox says, smiling.
A Catholic who regularly attends Sunday Mass, he is competing with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge for the hearts and minds of thousands of parents who have chosen parochial schools over public schools. In a state where public schools must pay to bus kids to private schools and pay for their books, too, Wilcox wants those families back.
His own children attend a public magnet school miles from his upper middle class home in the southeast portion of the parish.
The Pinellas contingent plans to interview administrators, teachers and others in Baton Rouge. Then the two school boards will meet to discuss the man who effectively has become their joint property.
Caught in the middle of a process that makes him hopeful yet uneasy, Wilcox tries to calm his staff and inspire them at the same time.
"This Pinellas thing can't get in the way of what we're doing here," he says.
Many of them are scheduled to speak with Pinellas visitors, and Wilcox tells them there will be no repercussions if they criticize him.
"This is too big a thing in terms of kids, both here and there, for the wrong decision to be made," he says. "So be honest."
Either way, he tells them, he'll have a great job.
CLAYTON WILCOX, IN HIS OWN WORDS:
ON THE PINELLAS SCHOOL CHOICE SYSTEM, WHICH ASSIGNS STUDENTS BASED ON A LOTTERY: "I don't really think there's a deal-breaker in this thing because we very much want to come to Florida. But if there is one, do you know what it would be? My kids and where they would go to school. That's so important to us. That's why we're in this business. . . . We just want a nice neighborhood school where our kids can go. . . . I would never ask for something special for me or my kids. But at the same time I don't want to feel that my kids have to sacrifice because of their dad's job."
ON THE JOB OF PRINCIPALS: "I expect them to resist the tyranny of the urgent, which is all the people coming into their office saying I need your time, I need your time. Because their real work is in the classrooms assisting teachers. . . . I would hate to walk into a building and have (a principal) tell me that a teacher was a great teacher and then him not have been there. Because how would he know? You've got to live it. You've got to walk the talk. You've got to be in classrooms."
ON THE GAP IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE STUDENTS: "There are no throwaway children. There never should have been. But I think the reality is that in many school systems . . . we taught to the middle and we were real happy when the great majority of our kids scored well. And we didn't lose too much sleep when an individual child fell behind or perhaps even left us. And that's a sad comment on American public education, but I think we can all accept that it's true."
ON COMMITTING TO PINELLAS SCHOOLS: "I'm telling you that I will stay as long as you'll have me, and I'm telling you that I did not enter into this conversation lightly. My wife and I . . . would really very much like to raise our children here. We would like this to be the stop where our children, a fourth-grader and second-grader, could say that this is where they went to school. . . . I will stay. I am not somebody who jumps around and moves from place to place."
CLAYTON MICHAEL WILCOX
BORN: Sept. 14, 1955.
RAISED: Cedar Falls, Iowa.
EDUCATION:
Cedar Falls schools, K-12.
Bachelor's and master's degrees from University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, 1979 and 1991 respectively.
Doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, 2003. Dissertation subject: the effects of certain policies on magnet school enrollment, focusing on Baton Rouge, La.
WORK HISTORY:
Waterloo (Iowa) Community School District: Teacher/coach, 1980-92; administrator, 1992-94.
St. Johns County (Fla.) Public School System: Personnel director/human resources director, 1994-99.
East Baton Rouge (La.) Parish School System: assistant superintendent, 1999-2001; deputy superintendent/interim superintendent, 2001-02; superintendent, 2002-present.
PERSONAL: Wife Julie and two children, Tanner, 10, and Morgann, 7.
OUTSIDE INTERESTS: Books on management/leadership. Family time. Following collegiate sports.
