Audio By Carbonatix
State legislators at the end of another bruising session in the capital are not unlike a football team coming back from an away game. They hop a plane, kick back, and relive in exaggerated detail every point won and lost. Some even think ahead to the next contest. A few weeks ago, on one of these rides back from Tallahassee, a former football coach and Miami High history teacher named Ralph Arza was chatting with fellow legislators and lobbyists about the next scrimmage at the Miami-Dade school district. He wondered aloud whether it was time to encourage the school board to start a national search to replace battle-weary Merrett Stierheim as superintendent.
The reasoning the legislators developed, as related to New Times by sources present for the conversation, went like this: Stierheim’s contract doesn’t expire until June 2004, at which point he will be almost 71 years old. He’ll have accrued sufficient time in the system to garner a state pension, important to a man at the likely end of his public career. Maybe someone could break it to him gently that it’s time to go. Stierheim’s contract will automatically renew for another year unless the school board cancels it by December. The last thing Arza and the others want is a showdown with the old guy. Stierheim is smart, politically savvy, and comes with impeccable credentials. And he’s a fighter. If they bungle it, it could easily look to the public like the dragon killing the white knight to get at the village sheep. Arza prefers a sports metaphor and a different spin. “It’s like a good pitcher on the mound sometimes doesn’t know when it’s time to be released,” he explains in a phone interview. “A winner still thinks he’s got another pitch in him. Merrett’s a winner and he thinks he does have one more pitch.”
But Stierheim is also a practical man. He could have raised a stink at the county when Alex Penelas pushed him out to bring in a more malleable county manager. He didn’t because he realized his ouster was inevitable and because he’s a professional. He chose to swallow his pride and go gracefully. At the school district Stierheim is ever aware of the need to keep at least five of the nine school board members in his column. It is, unfortunately, an awful way to run an organization as big and complicated as the school system — especially one that needs deep reform and is under constant siege by both interior instability and exterior attacks.
He’s managed, just barely at times, to keep a slim majority on his side. Four members — Frank Bolaños, Agustin Barrera (Arza’s brother-in-law), Robert Ingram, and Solomon Stinson — are his most frequent critics, though for different reasons. Stierheim appears to have solid support from at least three more board members, but there’s uncertainty about a couple of the others, such as Michael Krop, whom fellow board members and staff sometimes privately dub “Tricky Mickey,” owing to his highly flexible voting philosophy.
At the June 18 school board meeting, Stierheim seemed to have tired of all the posturing. He issued a statement to the board that essentially warned them to fish or cut bait: “At the July board meeting, it is my intent to candidly discuss my observations … on both my role as your chief executive officer and your role as the elected policy-making board of this school district. In addition, I will advise the board whether I believe it is in this community’s and the school district’s best interest to institute an immediate national search for my successor….” The implication seems clear. “It looked like either a power play or a shot over the bow,” assesses Surfside Mayor Paul Novack, who has frequently sparred with Stierheim over reform issues.
Behind the scenes, discussions continue. ber-lobbyist Ron Book, who works for the school system and several local governments, was present for some of the legislators’ chatter. “I’ve heard some members of the [Miami-Dade] delegation express thoughts that Merrett wasn’t there for the long haul, that he didn’t have the votes for the long haul,” he relates, adding, “I was not a part of the conversation as much as I was just there…. I wish they had stronger feelings for Stierheim. They don’t, and that will play out.”
According to another source, one idea legislators considered was asking Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez to have a talk with Stierheim, his old friend. Martinez laughs at the idea of playing the part of the Cuban emissary. “Merrett is a dear friend of mine and I respect him,” he says. “I don’t understand why he wanted to get into that [school district] mess in the first place, but he did and I support him.”
School board member Betsy Kaplan also says she’s solidly behind Stierheim, as long as he wants to stay. “We are fortunate to have him,” she maintains. “People play games, but they will never get my vote. I’m sure they do want him out, the Republican mafia up there.” Kaplan repeats a widely circulated rumor that Ralph Arza’s true motivation in this could be his desire to snag the superintendent’s job for himself. Arza admits he does in fact covet the job — someday. He also wouldn’t mind being the state education commissioner. But not now. He says he plans to take a leave of absence from the school system soon and go to work teaching and recruiting students at Florida International University.
Arza claims he’s not trying to attack Stierheim personally. He simply believes the superintendent isn’t the right man to lead the district into the future. Stierheim, he feels, isn’t willing to risk the ire of the school board by making big changes. “This isn’t so much about Merrett but about true school reform and who can get our district to the next level,” he says. “The trouble is when you have somebody who really doesn’t understand the inner workings of a school district as it pertains to delivering education. At the end of the day he doesn’t understand this animal.”
Here’s what Stierheim is up against: The economy is weak, state budgets are shrinking, competition for school dollars is up. The school board’s own track record of enabling flagrant waste has made it and the system an easy target for out-of-town legislators who already don’t want to send money here. The state-imposed oversight board has spent eighteen months trying to force meaningful reform on the school district’s dysfunctional construction department. Currently about $107 million in school-construction money is sitting in Tallahassee because the school board and the oversight board can’t agree on the thorny issue of privatizing maintenance at nine schools to see if it can be done more efficiently. “What we have is an organization that has grown up and become an elephant,” opines oversight board member Ed London. “It’s very difficult to move an elephant with a toothpick, but we’re trying. We keep sticking them.”
Meanwhile the public mandate to reduce class sizes will require a substantial infusion of cash in coming years, and the only way to get enough will be to convince voters to support another big bond issue — a laughable proposition at this point.
The scandal at the teachers union has crippled it for the foreseeable future, which means the district can’t rely on it as an effective lobbying partner in the state budget wars. Beyond that, there is a great deal of speculation within the district and law-enforcement circles that the federal probe into the finances of former union head Pat Tornillo could lead back to old allies at the district, possibly even school board members. Whether or not that’s true, the mere speculation is enough to add another layer of uncertainty to the finely balanced strategy Stierheim must pursue in order to keep his job and try to get a few things done.
Adding to this unpleasant situation, Stierheim has been unable to stabilize critical positions within his own bureaucracy. First came the bitter fighting with chief business officer Joe Arriola. That seemed to be resolved when Stierheim later appointed former Xerox executive Larry Staneart to the position. But Staneart wasn’t able to survive the poisonous atmosphere and left after six months. Stierheim also brought in his old protégé at the county, George Burgess, to be chief financial officer. But after months of working 60-hour weeks to learn the horrendously convoluted financial structure of the four-billion-dollar enterprise, Burgess was offered Stierheim’s old job at the county — and he went.
More troubling is a general feeling of unease within the bureaucracy. In order to change the district’s insular culture and encourage professional management, Stierheim has reorganized it three times. In the first, initiated a few months after his October 2001 hiring, he demoted most of the top cronies of the old superintendent, Roger Cuevas. The second round took out some of the do-littles in middle management. But the third reorganization, which came in March 2003, was the most profound, since it involved not only moving people around but also structural changes, such as reconfiguring the district’s six regional offices.
This is the paradox of changing an entrenched bureaucratic culture. Even more so than the county government from which Stierheim came, the school district is a very personal bureaucracy, one glued together by relationships built over decades. In time the culture became inbred and unhealthy, but by completely disrupting the old chains of loyalty, Stierheim’s administration has experienced backlash from managers who feel they no longer are a part of the hierarchy.
Several long-time administrators New Times spoke to for this story expressed dismay that they apparently are not trusted by Stierheim’s small inner circle (many of them brought in from the outside), and yet they haven’t had time since Stierheim’s shakeup to build strong relationships with people below them. So there are crucial people in the system who feel disconnected from both the top and the bottom, and not certain where the next crisis will send them. To add to the chaos, school board members accustomed to running their own little fiefdoms at the regional offices are now scrambling to recapture loyal minions from the ranks, further disrupting the Stierheim plan. “It’s just crazy,” laments one manager. “This is open gang warfare.”
Given all that, it seems likely this will be Stierheim’s last year at the school district, even though he has managed to implement many positive changes. The question is: Will he go gracefully or will he fight? Stierheim declined to be interviewed for this story. His spokesman said he wanted time to speak with each school board member before publicly broadcasting his views. But Ralph Arza is feeling good about it. “We are ready for somebody dynamic whom the teachers and community can rally around,” he offers. Then Arza laughs and relates a story: “Merrett and I were able to work together this session. He’s even invited me out fishing. I said, ‘Yeah, that reminds me of The Godfather, when they took Fredo out fishing too.'”
