School Committee choses LA school official as next superintendent

The School Committee tonight selected Tommy Chang, who currently oversees a system of 95,000 students in the Los Angeles school district, as Boston's next school superintendent.

The vote was 5-2 for Chang, 39, over Pedro Martinez, a Nevada state education official and former superintendent there. Guadalupe Guerrero, a San Francisco school official who spent six years as a principal at Dorchester's Devers School, did not get any votes. Dana Bedden, of Richmond, VA, who would have gotten at least one vote, withdrew his name shortly before tonight's School Committee meeting.

School Committee Chairman said Chang is "a quiet visionary" who will accelerate the changes needed to bridge achievement gaps and deal with impending budget crises while including teachers, students and parents into the decision process.

And O'Neill said Chang has a life story that will resonate with Boston students: A man who came to America as 6-year-old from another country who today is a successful educator.

O'Neill noted that Chang speaks four languages - including Spanish. School Committee members Miren Uriarte and Regina Robinson voted for Pedro Martinez, a Nevada education official, in part because he would serve as a role model for the roughly 40% of BPS students who are Latinos.

Committee member Michael Loconto said that while none of the candidates offered everything Boston needed, Chang came close: A career educator who has both taught and been a principal in some of the country's most challenging urban settings, who has shown he can develop overall system goals that still give individual schools the ability to chose the best way to reach those goals.

He said Chang, working with the school community, will help "transform the lives of children" who otherwise would have little future. And his emphasis on community involvement should prove welcome in a city where "Bostonian exceptionalism" is the norm and people want to get involved.

"To have somebody in Dr. Chang who actually has been a teacher and has been a principal to me is a huge advantage," member Meg Campbell said.

O'Neill said he was not worried that Chang, unlike Martinez, has never been a superintendent. He noted that some very fine cities, including Portland, Ore., currently have superintendents who did not serve in that role elsewhere. And as head of the Los Angeles district's Intensive Support and Innovation Center, he oversees 135 schools, from the equivalent of Boston turnaround schools to schools doing innovative work with outside partners.

Committee members praised Martinez for cataloging the problems he saw in Boston and acknowledged he hit the mark on most of them. Campbell, however, said it was unfair of him to say the Nevada districts he's led are doing better than Boston in standardized testing, because the MCAS is possibly the toughest test in the country.

"He did provide quite a wakeup call. If you weren't paying attention when he was in the room, you have to check your pulse," member Regina Robinson, who voted for him, said.

She said she was attracted to him by his background as the child of an immigrant family from Mexico who was also a "career changer" - from somebody with an MBA who went into financial work who realized his real passion was education.

She added she was concerned that Chang did not have as much experience as the other candidates in early childhood education and that he did not seem as connected to his own ethnic community, which she said raised questions whether he could be as sensitive to the needs of other ethnic groups in BPS.

Uriarte , who also voted for Martinez, said she was also concerned he did not have as much financial experience as Martinez.

Chang's application for the Boston job.