Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302130134
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
SUPERINTENDENT FINALISTS LOST THEIR BOARDS' SUPPORT
Neither of two finalists in the Montgomery County School Board's superintendent search is currently leading a school division and both lost the support of the last school boards for whom they worked.But the School Board was aware of those facts when it made finalists of Robert Rice, 54, of Arnold, Md., and Richard Holzman, 53, of Schenectady, N.Y., board member Virginia Kennedy said Friday.
Linda Ives, president of the Montgomery County Education Association, which represents most of the county's teachers, said Friday that she has talked with teachers association leaders in the areas where both finalists last worked.
"Frankly, I've not been impressed with either of the two candidates," Ives said. "If this is the best of the 80-odd candi- Rice dates that we're taking a look at, I wonder what kind of criteria was utilized by the selection committee."
Harold Dodge will step down as superintendent on June 30 after five years in the job.
The School Board has paid a Chicago firm more than $10,000 to help it find a replacement for Dodge, whose salary this year is $83,000.
Out of about 80 applicants, the Holzman board narrowed the field to six, including Rice and Holzman, who were interviewed earlier this month.
Rice was last superintendent of Anne Arundel County, Md., schools between 1984 and 1988. He left that job after a straw vote by the Board of Education there to renew his contract was a 4-4 tie.
Vincent Leggett, the only current member of the Anne Arundel board who served on the board during Rice's tenure, said Friday that he always had been a supporter of Rice.
Rice's departure was Anne Arundel's loss, Leggett said. "He's a very able person; he has vision and is also pragmatic."
Rice's problems with the Anne Arundel board could be attributed to some board members trying to involve themselves in day-to-day school operations, Leggett said.
Leggett said Rice was an excellent communicator who worked to build consensus through a participatory management style.
Rice was named Maryland's superintendent of the year in 1987. After he lost support of the Anne Arundel board, state legislators and others urged that he be kept on, according to newspaper reports.
Anne Arundel County has 65,000 students and a $283-million school budget compared with 8,000 students and a $42-million budget in Montgomery County.
"Sometimes there are jobs that are more manageable than others," Rice said Friday when asked why he would be willing to move from managing such a large school district to Montgomery County.
Rice, who holds a doctorate of philosophy from Iowa State University, has managed districts similar in size to Montgomery's in the past.
"You have a closeness with what's happening and you also have a closeness with the community," he said.
He couldn't explain all the reasons for his departure from Anne Arundel, but it was done with the agreement of all concerned, he said. He followed a longtime superintendent in the job and had been an agent of change, Rice said.
After leaving Anne Arundel, Rice joined the First National Bank of Maryland as a vice president of human resource development. For the past year he has been working as a consultant and farming on Maryland's eastern shore.
Asked about his management philosophy, Rice said, "I expect everybody to perform to their level of accountability."
The other finalist, Holzman, left his last job as superintendent of the Middletown Township schools in Monmouth County, N.J., in September after the Board of Education there voted unanimously to oust him.
Holzman, 53, had been in Middletown for two years. He will continue to draw his $95,000 annual salary through June 30.
Previously, he had been superintendent in Schenectady, N.Y., where the School Board had voted in 1990 not to extend his contract.
The Middletown board cited "philosophical differences," as the reason for its vote to remove Holzman, according to an account in the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press. The vote brought to an end what had become an increasingly stormy relationship among Holzman, board members, union representatives and some members of the public, the newspaper said.
The paper reported that the Middletown administrators' union had given Holzman a vote of no confidence in 1991 after he decided to discipline a high school principal.
Also, last June the 1,000-member Middletown Township Education Association passed a resolution criticizing Holzman's leadership and asking the board to fire him.
But Middletown Board of Education Vice President Bob Spatz said in a telephone interview that he would not characterize the September vote that ousted Holzman as a firing.
"We have a difficult board to work with," Spatz said. "We've had a lot of problems the past few years."
The board had gotten into the habit of micromanaging the schools and it was a difficult environment to work in, Spatz said.
The prosperous New York City bedroom community was divided into a variety of political factions. Senior citizens wanted to keep taxes low; others wanted to spend more on schools, Spatz said.
The board decided it needed to find someone everyone could agree on if it was ever going to get over its internal bickering, Spatz said.
As for the opposition of the Middletown teachers, Spatz said, "Nobody gets along with the teachers here. Everything is a confrontation."
The county has a "very militant" teachers union, he said. "Now, they're attacking board members."
Holzman "came down hard" on some of the things the president of the teachers' association was trying to do, Spatz said. He said he wouldn't judge anything by what the teachers' group has to say.
Holzman had some good ideas in terms of the greater good, Spatz said. He instituted prekindergarten programs and a special program to help at-risk first graders catch up and hired a good assistant superintendent of elementary education, he said.
Holzman came to Middletown from Schenectady where he had been hired in 1987 to reorganize the school district. Bethany Killeen was elected to the Schenectady Board of Education as an opponent of Holzman's plans.
Some of Holzman's ideas to close and merge schools eventually were adopted, others were not, Killeen said. She attributed some of his problems in Schenectady to the introduction of new ideas in a very conservative community.
Holzman worked to improve communication among the city's schools, forming a district-wide PTO group, she said.
He had strong leadership skills and was able to deal with a crisis, Killeen said. "He wasn't afraid to take an unpopular stand."
Holzman will meet with members of the Montgomery County community Monday at 7:30 p.m. at Christiansburg High School. Rice will attend a similar meeting Wednesday night at the same time and location.
After Holzman's departure in New Jersey, an editorial in the Asbury Park Press addressed the question of finding a new superintendent for Middletown.
"This time, though, board [of education] members ought to work a little harder, ask a few more questions and conduct their own background checks before they give the nod to a candidate who is highly recommended," the editorial writer advised.