Lawndale

When Guin and I decided it was best to leave Corona I began to send job applications to various school districts where there were vacancies. One of the first was Independence in Owens Valley and they needed a Superintendent who would serve as High School and Adult Education Principal as well as administrator of an elementary school in Death Valley about one hundred miles away. I told the Board Members there that I thought they should hire someone else. Carol and I enjoyed the trip and we met some very nice people but the job was not one that would allow a person to do more than work hard and try to survive.

I also applied at Ventura Elementary for a job as Business Manager. I was amazed to find the Superintendent afraid to hire an assistant who came from a Unified District. I found the same situation at Glendora Elementary. In other words, I was over qualified in the eyes of the Superintendents and they were uneasy with an assistant who had a record of successful experience in a wide range of areas.

Finally in March 1953 I got a call from Lloyd Nelson at the University of Southern California. Lloyd was a Texan who had earned his Doctorate at Stanford at the age of twenty two and was now specializing in School Business Administration at USC. I had become acquainted with him at California Teachers Headquarters when I was on the Teacher's Salary Committee at Corona. He told me there was a Business Manager's job open at Lawndale in Los Angeles County and that the district was in a real mess. They had just fired their Superintendent. They had no coordinated record system and needed a complete "Overhaul" from stem to stern. He knew that I had completely "rebuilt" the Corona system and he felt that I could do well in Lawndale. I had my confidential file sent from Claremont College to Lawndale and called there to schedule an appointment for an interview. The interview was set up for an evening so Guin and I drove to the district which is located a few miles south of the Los Angeles International Airport.

There were two candidates to be interviewed that day and I was called in first. I immediately liked the Superintendent, Cliff Riddlebarger. The three Board Members were easy to talk with and we had an informal conversation about the trials and tribulations of school districts. When we finally ran down, Hobson Denmark, Board President said, "You are the man we want. We have one more candidate to interview but it wont take long. Please wait and then we will discuss the details of your employment." When I looked at the Superintendent he nodded his head and so I went out and Guin and I waited a little while and came back in to work out the details of our contract.

We moved to a small rental house in Manhattan Beach and Carol enrolled in school in that district. She was no longer a target because her father was a district administrator. It helped her.

The Lawndale School District was very "poor" which means that there was very little local property to tax for the support of services. Virtually all the taxable wealth consisted of residential property which historically produces more children than it does taxable wealth to support their education. There were five elementary schools and an Intermediate, seventh and eighth grades. Some of the schools were being replaced and two more were being added, all financed through the State School Building Aid program with which I was very familiar. The School Board had fired the former Superintendent and hired Cliff Riddlebarger. The Business Manager was a real non-entity who simply sat in his chair and let the superintendent do his work. I spent one day with him on a tour of the district and his principal topic of conversation was the stock market where he had invested heavily. I later discovered that he spent most of his "working" hours on the telephone with his stock broker. The funds he had invested were his own not those of the district.

Lloyd Nelson had told me that I would be shocked when I saw some of the things that went on in Lawndale but that I should move slowly and in a calculated way to gradually make improvements. My first day on duty I found two painters asleep on the job, janitors playing cards in a supply room and clerks missing from their desks as they left "early" from their duties. In all, seven employees were suddenly "unemployed" and that was just the first day. To be fair there were some good employees in the schools and in the Business Office. All they needed was some encouragement and support. Most of all, they needed some records of district financial operations including building projects. Apparently the former Superintendent had kept all the financial records in her office and when she was discharged the records disappeared.

By working through the office of the County Superintendent of schools, the County Auditor and the State Department of Finance I was able to re-construct a fairly reliable financial picture. I then began to look for titles to school district land. I found the titles to all parcels except for the title to one lot at a new school which was under construction. I checked at the site and found that a large classroom wing was being built on it and the building was almost completed. I immediately rushed to the County Recorder's Office to get the name and address of the owner of the lot. He was a resident of the state of New Jersey. When I called him, I acted mildly interested in the property and told him if we bought it he would be paid in full. I indicated that I would discuss the matter with my Superintendent and the Board of Education and would call him back in a week or so. Although I acted "mildly interested" when talking to the lot owner, we just had to acquire that lot. We already had a building on it and were in a barrel of trouble if we could not buy it.

One small problem was that we did not have money for the purchase and would have to get it from the State so I took all the descriptions and documents and flew to Sacramento to talk with Jim Harris and Paul Hoyenga in the State Department of Finance Local Allocation Division. They were most cooperative and after a few days we received a supplementary apportionment of funds from the State. Meanwhile, I had negotiated with the lot owner and we agreed on a price. It was a close thing but turned out all right.

During my first year in Lawndale the State law was changed to require a five-member board of education in all elementary school districts. The old law required only three members. We had two excellent members and a third who was rather wild. Unfortunately we added two more "wild ones" at the next election and were promptly in trouble.

One of the new Board Members was an employee of North American Aviation, a large aero-space firm in El Segundo. This member never attended a Board meeting alone but was always accompanied by a "Friend" who was a surly unfriendly man who was not a resident of the School District or the immediate community. The Board Member never voted on critical items without first conferring with his "Friend."

One major item for Board consideration was renewal of the Superintendent's contract which expired in June. This item was discussed at length for at least a month and it was finally decided that the District would get a new Superintendent. This was a real shock to me and I immediately told the Board that they should also find a new Business Manager and that I would resign as soon as I could locate a position else where.

Sometime during the following week the Superintendent sent word that he wanted me to come to his office. When I arrived I found a well dressed man there who was introduced as an FBI agent. He told us that the Board Member's "Friend" had been under surveillance by the Bureau for some time and that he was a convicted criminal who should be avoided wherever possible. He advised us to avoid our unlighted parking area and never to go out to our cars alone. He had been attending our Board meetings for some time and was trying to determine what the "Friend" was up to.

Not long after the session in the Superintendent's office the two of us went to North American's headquarters in El Segundo where we talked with a vice president in charge of personnel. We told him the whole story, including the visit of the FBI agent. The Vice President made no promises but within a month the Board Member was transferred to Palmdale so had to resign from the Board.

I never found out what happened to the "Friend" or why he had been advising a Board Member in a small elementary school district in Los Angeles County. I was too busy and I was sure the FBI could take care of that situation.

Both the Superintendent and I needed new jobs. Cliff Riddlebarger, the Superintendent, applied for a position in Valencia in Orange County. Hobson Denmark, President of our Board went to Valencia and talked with those board members there Cliff was hired and I am sure that Hobson Denmark's influence was the key that unlocked that door.

I applied at Torrance for the position of Director of Construction. My old friend from Corona, Hank Hull was Superintendent and needed a Business Manager and a Director of Construction. After a long interview, I was hired as Assistant Superintendent- Business Manager at Torrance Unified School District. This happened exactly two years from the time I had left Corona in April 1953.

This may be a good place to say something about superintendents. I worked with six superintendents, of varying abilities, during my twenty nine years as a Business Manager. Every one of them were fired or they resigned under fire. Now you might say it was my fault but it really was not. In my opinion, only one of the six deserved to be forced out of the job. In all other cases, the School Board was petty and very short sighted when they took action. I still believe in local control of school districts but I know that local boards, as now constituted, are not doing an acceptable job. We need some kind of qualification and training program for board members. Not just anyone off the street can do the job which is now open to all comers regardless of who or what they are. No adequate school system can function under a typical local board and the education of children is too important a job to leave entirely to chance as we do now.