Public Schools: Nice Guy's Exit

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PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Superintendent Calvin Gross came in to New York City's pressure-racked school system two years ago with a reputation as the nation's most technically proficient school administrator. His record in achieving racial integration and academic innovation in Pittsburgh had been brilliant. But Pittsburgh, with its 75,000 students and its tight, cooperative civic-power structure, is not New York, with its 1,060,000 students and its vast, indifferent establishment. Last week the mild-mannered Gross got a rude shove out.

Bad Luck, Bad Judgment. Gross, now 45, was the youngest man and the first non-New Yorker ever to run the New York system. His luck, which had always been good, deserted him from the first: at once he faced the threat of a citywide strike by the muscle-prone United Federation of Teachers and a massive school boycott by civil rights leaders. Gross resolved to "deal with the system on its own terms, until I know my way around and know where the traps are."

The traps were all around him, and Gross never did figure out how to avoid them. He found 212 professional and civic associations banging on his door with special gripes. He consumed hours in hearing them out, later complained: "There are a lot of people in this town who care more about the noise you make than the results you get. They're the 'go ahead, raise your voice, I'll hold your coat' types." He discovered he had wasted a lot of time: "I've never had to leave so much undone in my life."

"He dillies until he can't dilly any longer; then he dallies," snapped Manhattan Presbyterian Clergyman Charles Leber. "I honestly don't know of one contribution he has made to the school system since he became superintendent," grumbled a member of the board of education. "We've been pleading with him, we've been begging him—we just couldn't get this guy moving," complained another.

An Unseemly Fuss. Gross had talked about promising-sounding plans for decentralizing the school system, for curriculum changes, for integration without disruption: nothing came of them. He even failed to fill the key post of deputy superintendent in charge of personnel. During one time of crisis he was in Los Angeles—recuperating from pneumonia but well enough to make a speech; during another he was in Honolulu on vacation. He got into an unseemly public fuss with the board to get his salary raised from 540,000 to $45,000 a year.

But the basic problem is that the school post requires a charismatic political leader rather than a logical technician—a man who can overpower the power groups and escape becoming a prisoner of the system. Gross is not that man. The board asked him to resign and ordered him at least to take a three-month leave. Gross, whose contract has four years to run, hired Attorney Herbert Brownell to protect his rights. For the city, a basic question loomed: Can any man, anywhere, handle the job?