For Russell, a career of challenges

Calm. Unflappable. Great listener. Quietly effective. Trustworthy. A deep caring for kids.

That’s how current and past school board members and other supporters describe 67-year-old George Russell, who had to be persuaded to take the job of Eugene School District superintendent in January 1999 after serving six months as interim superintendent when his predecessor, Margaret Nichols, died of cancer in June 1998.

Russell’s last day on the job is today. His successor, Sheldon Berman, officially takes over the reins on Tuesday.

Another adjective to describe Russell’s superintendency might be: reluctant.

Asked if he would do it all over again, knowing what he knows now, Russell said in an interview last week that he probably would have trusted his initial gut instinct and remained as the school district’s human resources director.

“I don’t think it was a mistake,” Russell said of accepting the top job. “I’ve learned a lot. I do know I never set out to be a superintendent. I’ve had a great ride and I think I’ve done a good job.”

In recent years, Russell has been at the helm as the district struggled with the largest budget shortfalls in its history, the most schools closed during any superintendent’s tenure, and a decrease in enrollment — and subsequent loss of state funding — of more than 2,000 students.

It doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, but Russell’s many supporters defend him with reverence.

“One of the things I appreciate about George is, he wasn’t afraid to address the issue head on,” school board Vice Chairwoman Alicia Hays said. “And not give you the answer, but the question. George is great at bringing up the question. He does an excellent job of that.”

Paul Duchin, a retired teacher and former Eugene Education Association union president, said he believes Russell “made a sincere effort to always do the right thing, whether that was for students or employees. I think George was willing to make some bold and creative decisions. George has been someone we always felt we could trust.”

School board member Jim Torrey is also laudatory of Russell’s tenure — but with a caveat. Torrey said he believes Russell could have been more adamant in expressing to the board the need to get ongoing district costs under control.

“As a district, and as a board, we could have been more careful in terms of contractual agreements,” Torrey said. “The superintendent has an awful lot of authority to say to the board that the focus must be on the students. It’s a tough line to walk and I think George walked it very well, but we’re at a point now where the kids are being affected by the financial situation that exists.”

For his part, Russell never imagined he’d be tackling budget woes for so many years from the superintendent’s perch.

“I didn’t think I’d be here two years, to be honest,” he said during last week’s interview in his office at the district’s Education Center.

Russell’s 13 years leading the district through some of its most challenging times ranks as the third-longest tenure in the district’s 120-year history, behind only the 14 years served by Nichols (1984-98) and Millard Pond (1959-73). He was the first nonwhite superintendent in Eugene district history. Not that the understated Russell thinks it’s that noteworthy.

“I’m not sure it’s been that important at all,” Russell said. “It may be to some kids who see that as important, and that there are some things you can aspire to. And it may be important to the community, especially in Eugene, which sees itself as progressive.”

Russell then added this observation: “It is interesting to note that, when I retire, there won’t be another African-American superintendent in the state.”

“You have the best”

Raised in New York City, Russell was the son of a schoolteacher mother and a career Army father who later got his doctorate and became a college educator. Despite his parents’ education credentials, Russell not only never planned on being a school superintendent, he never thought he’d be an educator — period.

He wanted to be a professional basketball player.

He played two years at Howard University in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s, before a knee injury ended his dreams of making the NBA. After six years in the Air Force, Russell found himself in graduate school at Golden Gate University in San Francisco, where he got a master’s degree in public administration.

After a brief social coordinator job with Contra Costa County in the Bay Area in the early 1970s, Russell saw an ad in 1974 for a personnel position with the Eugene School District. He applied and got the job — assistant personnel director for affirmative action — and would spend five years here during the tenure of highly regarded Superintendent Tom Payzant. When Payzant was named superintendent of schools in Oklahoma City in 1979, Russell went with him as his assistant. After a couple of years in Seattle, Russell rejoined Payzant in 1983 to help run the San Diego Unified School District.

Russell returned to Eugene in 1991 as the human resources director for Lane County until 1994. For the past 17 years, he has been employed by the Eugene School District, serving as human resources director for four years before rising to the superintendency. Although he agreed to step in after the death of Nichols, who had been named Oregon Superintendent of the Year in 1997, he said he had no interest in filling her shoes permanently.

There was only one problem: Nichols had already recommended him.

Still, a search committee launched a national search, and school board member Virginia Thompson, who led the committee, and Chairman Chris Pryor found themselves at national education conferences looking for their next leader. But, Thompson recalled this week, they kept hearing the same question: “What are you doing a national search for when you have the best right there?”

Thus, in the fall of 1998, the committee’s focus turned to Russell, who finally accepted the job and officially took over in January 1999.

“If Margaret Nichols trusted George, and George in time was willing to step in, it seemed it was the kind of leadership the district needed,” Thompson said. “And I have never regretted for one minute the decision that I made.”

Closing doors

Russell actually intended to retire last year, but he was “snookered” by a certain school board member, he said, somewhat jokingly. Board Chairman Craig Smith, who in May was re-elected to a fifth term, admits his plan a year ago was also to step down at the end of the 2010-11 school year. But given the district’s record $21.7 million budget shortfall, and relative inexperience of the rest of the board, he decided in December to run again.

“It’s an accurate statement,” Smith recalled with a laugh. “We were going out together.”

Russell’s final year has arguably been his most difficult to maneuver.

In November, he made his recommendations to the board on how it should deal with what was then projected to be an astounding $30 million budget shortfall for 2011-12. The recommendations included closing six schools, a rare reconfiguration plan that would have turned several elementary schools into K-3 schools and four middle schools into 4-8 schools, along with increasing class sizes by laying off more than 100 teachers.

The $30 million figure would shrink by almost $9 million when the numbers fleshed out, with two schools spared closure and the reconfiguration plan taken off the table for now. But it was still a record shortfall, and tough for the top man to endure.

“Obviously, it’s sad, and you feel bad,” Russell said. “I would rather not close schools. And you don’t want to put people out of jobs.”

Russell has made the gut-wrenching decisions to close more than a dozen schools since 1999, all but one of them elementary schools, and most of them neighborhood instead of alternative schools — including Coburg, Crest Drive, Meadowlark and Parker this year. Those have been unpopular decisions in those neighborhoods, to say the least, and reflect a perception held by some parents and others that the district gives undue preference to alternative schools.

“Your absence was noted by and was deeply disappointing for all in attendance,” Parker Elementary School parent Matt Ramsey wrote in a Jan. 26 e-mail to Russell, referring to a Jan. 19 public hearing on the school closures, when Russell was at a conference on the East Coast. “One thing you missed … was an outpouring of support for Parker. I think you know that. But another thing you missed is that many parents in our neighborhoods now accuse you of favoring economically elite families in our district in your proposal to foster Charlemagne (an alternative school) at Parker’s expense.”

Russell responded to Ramsey’s e-mail, one of hundreds the district received from upset parents, teachers and community members, 11 minutes after he received it:

“Thank you for your comments,” Russell wrote. “My track record on equity is a long one, as is my stance on neighborhood schools, so your aspersions are particularly grating. But I appreciate you sharing them.”

Russell notes that the district has also built six new schools during his superintendency, including two, Cesar Chavez and Bertha Holt elementary schools, that replaced four closed schools, and the construction of brand new buildings on the Cal Young and Madison middle school campuses.

“I’ll miss the kids”

Four straight years of multimillion-dollar budget shortfalls has nothing to do with Russell’s leadership abilities, said longtime board member Smith, whose been there for all of Russell’s years as superintendent, having joined the board in 1995.

“I think it’s a function of an unstable revenue system at the state level,” Smith said. “He has done what he can do balancing the needs of kids with (available) financial resources.”

Payzant, now retired and living in Boston after serving as the schools superintendent there in the mid-1990s, agrees.

“The (budgetary) craziness is happening everywhere,” Payzant said. “There’s no place to go but trimming people or closing schools.”

The financial woes have been the most challenging aspect of his tenure, Russell said. Despite them, he said he is most proud of closing the so-called “achievement gap” over the years for low-income and minority students, one of his top goals when he took over.

“I’ll miss working with the community, but I’ll miss the kids the most,” said Russell, who plans to do some consulting work for Oregon school districts in retirement, along with more golfing and fly fishing.

He also wishes his successor, Berman, the best of luck. But Russell doesn’t plan to offer unsolicited advice.

“I will have my cell phone with me,” Russell said. “But I don’t expect to be called. He needs to set his own path. And the last thing he needs is to have the previous superintendent hovering around and second-guessing him.”