Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993 TAG: 9304050261
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
SCHOOL CHIEF REMAINS EAGER TO TEACH, LEARN
E. Wayne Harris can't sit still.He apologizes as he leaps to answer a jangling telephone in the temporary office where he resides - restlessly - until he can move three offices over to assume the Roanoke school superintendent's post on July 1.
Harris crams his periodic visits to Roanoke with nonstop activity, the result of a desire to quickly build relationships in the school community. His schedule on this day is full: school visits; interviews with School Board members; meetings with teachers, principals and the school administration "cabinet."
Yet Harris, 47, appears comfortable on the brink of leadership. His enthusiasm for stepping into the shoes worn for 12 years by Frank Tota is obvious in his conversation.
Colleagues call Harris charismatic, a visionary, someone who works hard and expects others to follow suit.
"I have high, high expectations, sometimes to the point that people say `He's way off base,' " Harris says. "But I think people also will tell you that kids always come first with me. I won't do what's politically correct if it's not in the best interest of kids.
"The political agenda is not what drives the way I lead. The educational agenda - what's best for kids - is the driving force behind my leadership."
\ "Vrooom," they called him. Still do.
Harris was a basketball and football standout at the old G.W. Carver School in Salem. He was fast - hence the nickname, former coach Roland Malone said.
Harris also excelled academically, graduating fourth in a class of 39 in 1964.
"He had a great zest for learning," said Georgia Reeves, who taught math at Carver. "He was never satisfied unless the job was completed. I remember how hard he worked."
Until the mid-1960s, Carver was the only school that black youngsters in Roanoke County, Salem and Vinton - grades one through 12 - could attend. Some traveled miles to Carver - past dozens of white schools - because segregation practices would not permit them to attend any other school.
The Carver "family" remains a proud, close-knit group.
"That little school sitting up there on that truck route has produced so many successful students," says Harris, who was born and raised in Salem. "What Carver gave us was determination, energy and hard work. They didn't accept anything other than doing your best."
Carver classmate Marylen Harmon, now a sixth-grade teacher at Glen Cove Elementary School in Roanoke County, said Harris, like others, benefited from Carver's strong foundation.
"He never lost his sensitivity," Harmon said. "Everything he does is sensitive to people's feelings and conditions. He has the ability to disagree without being disagreeable. He takes others' ideas and decides what is best for all."
Framed photos of Carver students hang in the dining room of Jessie Jones' Salem home, mementos of her 21 years teaching at Carver.
In the corner of one faded black-and-white photo collage is the smiling face of a young Wayne Harris.
"Wayne Harris was a good scholar," says Jones, who is 93. "You could always depend on him to find out everything he could. He searched out and looked into everything that was being said and done. He was a climber."
At a Carver reunion in the mid-1980s, Harris read a letter he had written to Jones, who was not able to attend. In it, he recalled the fiery, 4 1/2-foot-tall educator who expected nothing but the best from her students.
Jones remembers the letter, now tucked away in a forgotten place.
"It made me feel proud, like I was some great teacher," Jones said.
\ The road to education
Harris' dream was to become a doctor.
He majored in biology at Shepherd College in West Virginia, setting his sights on entering medical school after graduation.
"But we didn't grow up wealthy," he said. "If I was going to med school, I would be the one to provide the resources."
Harris turned to teaching, figuring he'd work for a couple of years, then move on to medical school.
Harris headed north to Fairfax County, where he taught biology and coached at a secondary school. Two years later, as planned, he applied to medical school.
"They told me, `We'd love to have you but you're missing a couple of courses,' " Harris said. "So I decided I would go get a master's and pick up the courses there, then head back to med school."
In 1971, Harris earned a master of arts degree in zoology from Colorado State University. Harris stayed on to work on a doctorate, but when his money ran out, he returned to teaching in Northern Virginia.
Within four months, Harris was promoted to assistant principal of an intermediate school in Fairfax.
"I liked [education] and never left," he said. "Medicine was never meant to be."
Twenty-some years later, The Washington Post was calling Harris one of the Fairfax school system's most promising top administrators.
His talents were recognized by Roanoke School Board members who spent months searching for a successor to Frank Tota. After wading through a pool of 44 applicants, board members unanimously approved Harris last month.
One of the Roanoke Valley's own was coming home.
\ `Go run a system'
Harris' potential was considered untapped by some colleagues who viewed him as long having been ready for a superintendent's post.
"I think, frankly, that he's waited too long to be a superintendent," said Linton Deck, a director at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., and former Fairfax County school superintendent.
In the early 1980s, Deck plucked Harris from a principal's post at a Fairfax intermediate school to work directly with him as an administrative assistant. Deck was looking for a bright, school-based administrator, he said.
"I needed to have somebody at hand who was very credible with principals and other people in the system and knew more about it," Deck said. "I also wanted somebody who would be upwardly mobile. He did a great job."
Arthur Gosling, superintendent of the Arlington school system, saw Harris as prime superintendent material.
"I was one among several to push him to get his doctorate and find a place to take a top leadership role," Gosling said. "I always thought he was limiting his opportunity to move up until he got his ticket punched. A doctorate is a major sacrifice - to forgo the salary and benefits of staying gainfully employed."
Had it not been for the influence of colleagues like Deck and Gosling, Harris said, he likely would have remained in a lower administrative post for life, and contentedly so.
"That's what I wanted to do," he said. "I didn't want to be any of this other stuff.
"But these people told me it was time for me to get out of here and go run a school system. They told me I needed my doctorate to compete."
In 1990, Harris was one of nine people selected for Harvard University's doctoral program for urban superintendents. He expects to receive his doctorate this summer.
"I've been blessed with mentors," Harris says. "I've had so many people in my career."
\ Knocking down labels
Since 1983, Harris has served as one of Fairfax County's four area superintendents, overseeing about one-quarter of the county's public schools.
The 37-school, 27,000-student administrative area includes schools with some of the highest concentrations of minority students, particularly immigrants who speak little English.
Harris was one of the prime architects of several programs targeting at-risk children. His development of education programs to support and encourage minority student achievement was recognized with three awards, one from the National Education Association.
"He really focuses on improving instruction, on student achievement," said Steve Dollinger, administrator for operations for Fairfax schools, who has worked closely with Harris for more than a year.
"He's mentored a lot of minority kids, but I don't look at him as a role model just for minority kids. He's been a good role model for a lot of kids."
Harris recognized diversity and developed strategies to address educating a diverse student population, said Ray Watson, principal of Annandale High School in Fairfax County.
"Wayne was one of the people who early on recognized that you can't educate kids from all over the world at the same [kind of] school as you can . . . kids from similar backgrounds," Watson said. "As a hallmark of his leadership, he made sure the staff learned enough to be effective with a diverse group of students."
Harris says if he had his druthers, he would obliterate labels that educators are so quick to slap on students.
Harris says he avoids use of the term "minority." To Harris, the word connotes "less than."
"If we need to identify them ethnically, then let's identify them according to their ethnic background and not categorize them," he said. "There are times when we have to look at youngsters based on certain characteristics. But my goal is not to use those labels."
The topic that Harris chose for his doctoral dissertation speaks to his interest in knocking down labels - what influences black male high-school students to prepare to go to college.
"I'm using math as a lens to look at what influences black males to go to college because math is hot," Harris said. "It's described as the gateway. It's the thing that will assist a student in being accepted because colleges usually require a minimum of two upper-level math classes."
Another term that bothers Harris is "disadvantaged." To Harris, it sets up images of what youngsters can and cannot do.
"So now, when Jeffrey walks through the door, coming from a single-parent home or a home where the parents may be unemployed, we've decided that this kid can't be smart," Harris said. "So we give him certain kinds of experiences."
Poverty may be one of the most difficult issues facing education, Harris says. With it go inequity, lack of exposure, lack of experience, lack of understanding, he said.
"We have to stop labeling those kids who are living in poverty," he said. "I'm trying to convince people that irrespective of economic conditions, it's still our job to hold higher expectations for all of our children.
"They all can learn at higher levels."
\ Cool under fire
Ray Watson has known Wayne Harris since their years in the mid-1960s at Shepherd College in West Virginia. Watson says he remembers Harris mostly for his athletic prowess.
But when their paths crossed years later in Fairfax County public schools, Watson's perception of Harris broadened.
"Wayne has always presented himself as a person with goals and ambition and as someone who knew where he was going," Watson said. "He was willing to work to get there. And he did."
Watson calls Harris a staunch advocate for students and schools. He uses two words spoken frequently by Harris - "high expectations."
At a recent meeting of Fairfax County school staff, Harris "reminded us of our responsibility to make certain that we act on reality and that all children can learn, and learn at higher levels," Watson said.
"It's not a platitude. Not only did he state that philosophy but he acted on it - first by requiring high levels of performance, and then by providing all the support necessary to reach that level.
"Wayne wouldn't hesitate to go to the superintendent for the things that the principals in his schools needed."
In the summer of 1989, Harris had a superintendent's internship in the Montgomery County, Md., school system, one of the largest county school systems in the country. The internship was designed to prepare him for a superintendency.
"What I did was to train and to mentor him in defining and working through superintendent-level issues," said Paul Vance, superintendent of Montgomery County schools.
Harris "had to deal with such matters as relationships with the Board of Education, relationships with elected officials and executive staff, with the broader community."
Harris had limited experience in the development of capital improvement budgets and operational budgets, Vance said.
"So I afforded him what I thought was a broad array of experience in building those budgets," he said. "He actually was an active participant."
Vance said he also worked with Harris in day-to-day administrative and management responsibilities.
When the internship ended, Vance was required to evaluate Harris' performance. On the surface, it included "obvious attributes," such as intelligence, articulateness, impressive writing abilities, Vance said.
"But beyond that was a sensibility to be reflective in decision-making, an ability to look at the total picture and make decisions," he said. "He was extremely cool under fire. That is a major attribute a superintendent has to have - to be cool, calm and collective under a great deal of pressure, which is just about every day of his life."
Linton Deck, of the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, was the second person Harris called after he was named to the Roanoke superintendent's post.
"I was delighted," Deck said. "He's going to be a worthy successor to Frank Tota. His style will be different, not to denigrate Dr. Tota's style.
"But he's going to take the foundation built under Frank Tota's leadership and take it to new levels. I think [Harris] has a really strong vision of what schools ought to be and how to reinvent schools so that they serve the people in the community, not only in the present but into the 21st century."
\ E. WAYNE HARRIS
Age: 47
Hometown: Salem
Family: Parents, John and Gertrude Harris; one brother, Jonathan, a chief master sergeant stationed at McCord Air Force Base outside Seattle, Wash. A divorced father of three sons, Harris plans to marry Carolyn McAllister this summer.
Most noteworthy accomplishment: "The relationships I've developed with my sons are among the most gratifying things to me, particularly because for two of my sons I've done it almost single-handedly for the last six years."
Mentor: "Some people have one. I can't even count mine."
Favorite sport: "Right now, the sport I participate in is swimming with regularity to keep my weight in check. I played football and basketball in high school and in college but I'm not a sports fanatic anymore."
Favorite book: "I read stuff that gets me away from all the heavy stuff. The book that keeps me on balance is `The Art of War,' by Sun Tsu, a Chinese military gentleman."
Favorite movie: "I'm a Western fan. I'm talking about the Western gunfight and `O.K. Corral.' I grew up in the era when Westerns were real Westerns. I don't go to see the violent things, profanity. I'm not about that at all."
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