THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 31, 1995 TAG: 9505310470
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SUPERINTENDENT SHUFFLES
PORTSMOUTH: Trumble seeks a new leader
SOURCE: BY VANEE VINES, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
School Superintendent Richard D. Trumble is one of five finalists for the top job in Louisiana's East Baton Rouge Parish school district.
If Trumble gets the job offer - and then decides to take it - Portsmouth would be the fourth South Hampton Roads city to start the 1995-96 school year with a new schools chief.
Virginia Beach Superintendent Sidney L. Faucette will resign in July to take a job in Georgia.
W. Randolph Nichols, Chesapeake's deputy superintendent, will take over when Superintendent C. Fred Bateman retires in July.
Suffolk's School Board announced on Tuesday its decision to promote Assistant Superintendent Joyce H. Trump to superintendent. Beverly B. Cox III will retire in June.
Earlier this month - in response to rumors that he was ready to bolt - Trumble said no one had offered him a job or offered to interview him for one. But he had applied for the East Baton Rouge Parish job. Louisiana is divided into parishes instead of counties.
``I think it looks like a very challenging position,'' Trumble said Tuesday. He said he was attracted by the ``opportunity to work in a climate that values change.''
Trumble said he would accept the job if it were offered.
Unlike Portsmouth, the East Baton Rouge district is still under a desegregation order, which the school board there hopes to have lifted in the near future, a spokesman said. Officials also were impressed with Portsmouth's use of a strategic plan based on quality-management techniques.
The East Baton Rouge board named an interim superintendent after the former superintendent's contract expired in December. Nine challengers, several of them calling for school reform, were elected to the 12-member board in the last election.
Trumble has unsuccessfully proposed a number of controversial ideas, including a plan to hire a private company to run some city schools and another to bus some inner-city Portsmouth students to Cape Henry Collegiate School in Virginia Beach. Those ideas were not supported by the community - although other controversial ideas, like magnet programs, were well received.
In recent weeks, some School Board members have questioned Trumble's spending priorities for the upcoming school year, as well as parts of an administrative restructuring plan.
Portsmouth is poised for its biggest transition in years: the ending of elementary school busing for desegregation purposes beginning in fall. Trumble said he didn't think a change at the top would hurt that plan because the groundwork has been laid and administrators have taken over details.
School Board Chairman J. Thomas Benn III said Trumble called him Sunday to tell him he had made the short list in Louisiana.
``I guess it was a surprise; I didn't know he was looking,'' Benn said Tuesday. ``Personally, I would hate to see him go because we have a lot of good things going on. The turmoil is over and now it's time to see how things work. The dust has settled.''
Ellen Byrd, a parent-activist, said, ``If he feels as strongly about the programs as he says he does at PTA meetings and whatnot, I think he should stick by them. . . and not jump ship.''
Roger Moser, vice president of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, said Trumble is scheduled to meet with board members, parents and others next Tuesday - Trumble's 58th birthday. Trumble was one of 10 candidates recommended by a consulting firm the board hired to help with the search, Moser said.
Trumble didn't make the firm's short list of five candidates, but the board later added his name. The board expects to hire a superintendent by late June. The job would pay from $3,600 to $24,000 more than Trumble's current salary of about $106,000 a year.
The East Baton Rouge Parish district has about 58,000 students, three times as many as Portsmouth. That district is roughly 60 percent black; Portsmouth is about 68 percent black.
This isn't the first time Trumble has shocked Portsmouth with news of a job search.
Weeks after the local board gave him an extended, four-year contract about two years ago, he announced that he was a finalist for the Montgomery, Ala., superintendency. He later withdrew his name. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff file
Superintendent Richard D. Trumble described the East Baton Rouge
Parish job as ``a very challenging position.''
by CNB