By SCOTT MARTINDALE
2010-05-10 18:49:17
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – Joseph Farley, the superintendent of Anaheim's 33,700-student high school district for the past five years, has been named the sole finalist to become the next schools chief of the high-performing but politically fractured Capistrano Unified School District.
Farley will be responsible for managing 56 schools and an annual budget of about $372 million. He is expected to be officially hired at a school board meeting Tuesday and would assume the post July 1.
Farley declined to comment Monday, emphasizing he was a finalist for the position and has not been hired.
Farley, who lives in Newport Beach, would be paid a base salary of $275,000 annually, plus would receive retirement benefits, a portion of his health insurance costs and $600 a month for car expenses, according to his four-year contract, which was posted on Capistrano Unified's website Monday.
"The parties recognize that the demands of the superintendent, the key management position of the district, will require him to average more than eight hours a day and/or more than 40 hours per week," the 12-page contract says. "In that respect, the board hereby certifies that the duties, need for the flexibility of hours, salary, benefit structure and authority of the position are of such a nature that the position should be set apart from those other positions which are subject to the overtime provisions."
Capistrano Unified's next superintendent will have the dubious distinction of being the seventh person in the past four years to fill the district's top administrative post.
The school board fired its last permanent schools chief, Superintendent A. Woodrow Carter, in March 2009 after a tumultuous, 18-month tenure. Roberta Mahler, a retired schools administrator from the Buena Park-based Centralia School District, was hired a few months later, in June, to replace Carter on a one-year basis.
Mahler is being paid $975 a day, or $245,250 a year, assuming 14 unpaid vacation days and holidays and including a $450 monthly car allowance.
Carter received a base salary of $273,000 annually, and a total compensation package of $324,950 a year.
FIVE YEARS IN ANAHEIM
Farley is being paid a base salary of $237,400 annually as superintendent of the 21-campus Anaheim Union High School District. He has been in that role since 2005, and in 2008, received a four-year contract extension until 2012.
The district serves junior high and high school students across much of Anaheim, as well as Cypress, Buena Park, La Palma and Stanton.
Anaheim Union Trustee Thomas "Hoagy" Holguin declined to immediately comment Monday, saying he had just returned from a vacation and was unaware Farley might be leaving.
During his five-year tenure in Anaheim Union, Farley has taken the district successfully through years of painful budget cutting and gained tremendous respect in the process.
Among his many accomplishments, Farley is largely credited with turning around a school construction bond project that was facing heavy scrutiny.
An independent audit that was released just a month after Farley's hiring showed that because of earlier mismanagement, the district would be able to complete less than half of the projects planned under a $132 million bond program.
Like Capistrano, Anaheim Union has been forced to cut tens of millions of dollars from its budget in recent years. Most recently, under Farley's leadership, Anaheim Union was able to get teachers to agree to a 3.24 percent pay cut next year in the form of six furlough days.
"His integrity and dedication to doing what is right for the students and for the district – not what is expedient or political – is unparalleled," Anaheim Union Trustee Katherine Smith said in a 2008 interview.
Holguin echoed those sentiments, saying at the time that Farley had more than met the board's expectations.
"He has affirmed, time and again, that our confidence was not misplaced when we selected him," Holguin said.
NEW CHALLENGES
Capistrano will come with a special set of challenges for Farley. The South County school district – Orange County's second-largest, after Santa Ana Unified – remains embroiled in bitter, parent-driven politicking.
Last week, a group of district activists announced they have gathered enough petition signatures to force a recall election this November that could oust two district trustees. It would be the district's second recall election in as many years.
And the school district is still reeling from three days of teacher picketing last month that forced the 52,000-student district to cancel or postpone scores of programs and activities and pushed attendance rates as low as 30 percent.
The bitter standoff – over the language of a 10.1 percent pay cut imposed on teachers – laid bare Capistrano's deep community divisions and ongoing political rancor.
Even so, Capistrano has consistently affirmed its academic prowess. Last year, the district's growth Academic Performance Index score, an overall gauge of a school district's scholastic standing, shot up 21 points, to 857. The statewide benchmark is 800.
"He is very oriented to student achievements," Capistrano school board President Anna Bryson said in an interview last week, "and he is looking forward to taking a very high-achieving district to the next level."
Contact the writer: 949-454-7394 or smartindale@ocregister.com
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