Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales/EdSource

Fifty.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner helps a educatee check into schoolhouse on his showtime day on campus.

Credit: Betty Márquez Rosales/EdSource

Fifty.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner helps a student check into school on his first day on campus.

After a three-year tenure as the superintendent of the nation's 2d-largest school district, Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner announced Wednesday that he will stride downwardly from his position when his contract ends on June xxx.

EdSource's Betty Márquez Rosales and Louis Freedberg talked with Beutner on April 22, a day before the Lath of Didactics named Megan Reilly, the district's deputy superintendent of concern services and operations, to be acting superintendent.  The following is a lightly edited transcript of primal parts of their conversation:

EdSource: What role did the pandemic play into your decision to step down at this point?

Beutner: It plays a function. It has been fifteen-hour days, 7 days a calendar week for more than a year, quite bluntly well-nigh 3 years. Simply without question it plays a office.

I recollect if you widen the aperture, it is not simply reading, writing, arithmetic. It's food insecurity, housing insecurity, mental wellness, the digital divide: all of those challenges. And what has happened in Los Angeles Unified is we've had to accost all of them ofttimes by ourselves. When you take a public schoolhouse organization that has been starved of funding, starved of resources for decades now, the symptoms yous would near often talk most was grade size is too big or school libraries, librarians. Merely permit'southward widen the discontinuity now and await at what we've had to exercise over the past yr. It starts with food.

EdSource: The stress and these long days —  was that the chief reason that you decided this was the time to step down?

Beutner: The lath approached me a couple of months ago and said, "We'd like you lot to stay on, and let'south keep this going." At that time I said, "We're in the thick of this. Like a boat in a tempest. We don't know how we can open schools, when we tin can open up schools. We don't know if this vaccine volition go likely." I said, '"Permit me continue doing what I am doing. Focus on the task at paw. And let's take this conversation a flake further downwards the route."

Now nosotros are a bit farther down the road, and nosotros are reopening schools in what I believe to be the safest way possible. We're doing information technology the right way. We're doing it with the back up of our labor partners. Nosotros accept 86,000 employees who are touting the virtue of prophylactic in our schools to the school community. And that'south sharply at odds with some other larger districts. Seeing that foundation in place, existence at schools over the last several weeks as I've been, to see the support we take of those who work in schools and the communities we serve, led me to believe this is a fourth dimension we can do a handoff in the right mode with a sense of progress.

EdSource: Some people are concerned that this instability in leadership is not good. What practice you say to that?

Beutner: I remember continuity of leadership is critical to any well-operation and successful organization. Absolutely critical. And therein lies the challenge for school boards. This is non a unique claiming to Los Angeles Unified.

Continuity of leadership is not always or shouldn't always be looked at through the prism of who is in accuse. Part of continuity is non just who the side by side person is, but it's the commitment to stay with what is working or alter something that's non working. Only change for change's sake, which sometimes comes with new superintendents or some boards, that's also office of the challenge — the notion that each change should mean "Let'south start from scratch, let's just assume we don't need what was working."

So I hope the board will strive for continuity. Part of continuity of leadership is to take someone from the leadership team who knows what we're doing, who believes in what we're doing, who helped develop these plans, who are implementing them today.  That'southward another mode to solve the challenge of continuity.

EdSource: Did the schoolhouse board try disarming you to stay?

Beutner: The board tried to convince me. They offered me an extension. They wanted me to stay. In that location was unanimity around that. I served my time, and I think this is the right fourth dimension to transition. I don't think me staying 6 months or a year makes that deviation in… I'yard a son, I'1000 a husband, I'thousand a father. And then balancing my own responsibilities with the school district, this is the right time for the transition.

EdSource: In your role as a son, father, and hubby, what has the pandemic been similar for you?

Beutner: This has been an experience none of united states of america could have known what it would be like. Each twenty-four hour period is different. I call up for the first time we're able to encounter the horizon. Information technology is a sense of relief to me, but nosotros're not there even so. Wait at the communities we serve; they're not actually in that location yet. I was at an unproblematic school recently with 500 students and fifty staff or and then. Two students lost parents. Half-dozen students lost grandparents. 2 staff lost parents. Ten lost lives in a very modest school community. Nosotros're all living with that. I likewise know people who take passed from Covid. That'southward not the unique experience. I may exist somewhat of a public figure. I may have a job with certainly a set of responsibilities for a lot of other families. I have my own as well. It'southward a time for all of united states to sympathise healing will take time.

We all know people who've lost their lives; nosotros all know people who lost piece of work. I'm more fortunate than near. My family is healthy. I have a nice roof over my head. I know where my next meal is coming from. So many of the communities nosotros serve haven't had that same journey during Covid.

EdSource: I of the unique things virtually L.A. is that you lot have a full-time school board, each with his or own staff — some call them "mini superintendents."  Was that a gene in making your job more than difficult or thinking that information technology was time to movement on?

Beutner: It wasn't a factor in the timing of this determination. Information technology's a factor for anyone who is superintendent of L.A. Unified. To give y'all some sense of the magnitude, the lath collectively has about 55 or 60 staff and the superintendent has about 10. That's not what factored into my decision at present, simply certainly it is office of the challenge anyone faces as superintendent of Los Angeles Unified.

By the manner, you don't just have changing superintendents, yous accept changing boards. Information technology would be an interesting do for all boards to clearly ascertain what they believe their role to exist and the role of the superintendent. And that ought to be shared publicly by every school board in America.

EdSource:  You had a three-year contract. Was it your thinking when you came in that you would stay for merely three years?

Beutner:  In most of my career, if I understood what I'd be doing tomorrow, and I could run into a few months ahead, I'd view that as plenty of a management. I'd say three years has been 30 in dog years. It has been nonstop total-time 15 hours a solar day, three years worth.  I'm unfortunately or fortunately wired that way. I sympathise that when I take on a commitment, I will practice what I have to do to make sure I evangelize on my finish. I'k proud of the fact that nobody in the school commune works harder than I have. There are a lot of people who take worked right alongside me. But ask my colleagues, I practice the work.

EdSource: Are there people on your team who can footstep in?

Beutner: Admittedly. I of the things that I'm proud of over the last three years; nosotros've brought up the adjacent generation, put them in positions of responsibility throughout the schoolhouse district, and they're doing fantastic work.

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