Amato’s style has board in quandary

Community response to sole superintendent finalist is mixed

By Todd Murphy

The Portland Tribune, Mar 22, 2002, Updated Oct 30, 2009

The Portland Public Schools board this week seemed on the precipice of offering its superintendent’s job to Anthony Amato, the current superintendent of schools in Hartford, Conn.

And that possibility was causing some not-so-quiet rumblings from some of the Portlanders who met with Amato last week. They think Amato’s assertive management style would freeze out school leaders, teachers, parents and others from any voice in how the city’s schools should run.

Amato became the only announced finalist for the job on Monday when Patricia Harvey, schools superintendent in St. Paul, Minn., withdrew her candidacy a few days after interviewing for the Portland post. Harvey has decided to stay in St. Paul.

School board leaders repeatedly have said they may announce other finalists for superintendent. But so far none of the candidates has been willing to be publicly identified as being a finalist for the job.

The situation has left the board in the same awkward position it encountered four years ago when presenting Ben Canada as the sole finalist for the 1998 superintendent vacancy. It is trying to gauge community enthusiasm for hiring a candidate while offering no other choice.

The Portland board may have to give Amato an answer rather quickly. Amato has revealed that he has discussed jobs with at least two district school districts in California, which he has not named.

“If it’s somebody they want, they’re going to have to decide quickly, or he’ll go someplace else,” said David Knowles, a former city planning director who headed the Leadership Advisory Committee, a citizens group appointed by the school board to offer advice on what the community wants in a superintendent.

Amato’s assistant said he was out of the office Thursday and unavailable for comment.

Some of the local reaction to Amato, who visited the city last week, has unquestionably been positive.

“I thought there was a lot of upside in terms of his experience,” said Tony Hopson, who is a leader of the Education Crisis Team, a group of activists who have criticized the district for the school performance in Portland’s poor and minority neighborhoods.

Hopson, who was among those participating in the interviews with Amato, was referring to Amato’s experience in leading the Hartford district and before that a New York City school district Ñ both of which included many children from poor families and boasted improved test scores during Amato’s tenure.

But Hopson added that Amato talked little in his interview about community involvement in the schools Ñ“which kind of bothered me.”

Will he listen?

After hearing what some of his critics in Hartford have publicly and privately said about Amato, others have questioned his willingness to listen to others’ views in leading schools and school districts.

The head of the Hartford teachers’ union has publicly praised Amato. But Richard Garrett, president of the Portland Association of Teachers, said Hartford teachers who spoke with Portland union members “were uniformly critical of Amato Ñ his leadership style, his management style.”

During their Portland interviews, Garrett said, both Harvey and Amato displayed an “authoritarian tone” that troubled teachers. “But that was much more pronounced with Amato.”

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