Aides to Mayor Adrian Fenty have reached out to prospective superintendents — but insist the mayor hasn’t committed to firing current Superintendent Clifford B. Janey Jr.
Victor Reinoso, Fenty’s deputy mayor for education, has already spoken with Miami-Dade Superintendent Rudy Crew and Philadelphia schools’ Chief Operating Officer Tom Brady, sources told The Examiner on condition of anonymity because the discussions are supposed to be secret.
Brady had been Janey’s top aide, but he walked away in disgust late last year. He has said Janey was detached from the myriad problems facing the schools and would dither on crucial questions while things went from bad to worse.
Brady is being considered for the top schools job in Philadelphia. He would replace Paul Vallas, who ran Chicago’s schools and is now moving to the New Orleans schools.
It’s not clear how serious the discussions are: Crew announced on a Miami television station last month that he was being wooed for the top job, but one D.C. source said Reinoso only tried to get Crew’s sense of what went wrong in the District’s schools.
Crew had been a top candidate for the job in 2004, but he walked away in part because he wouldn’t supervise his own budget. He has since struggled in Miami. Earlier this year, he beat back a lawsuit from a school board member who accused him of withholding public documents.
Fenty has insisted publicly he has made no decision on leadership for the $1 billion school system. But a source close to the mayor said Fenty is worried about disrupting matters so close to the end of the school year.
The U.S. Senate has held up legislation that would formalize Fenty’s control of the schools. Toppling Janey now may make it harder to recruit a top candidate, the source said.
Fenty also hopes to secure Janey’s cooperation on immediate problems, such as the school consolidation plan, the source said.
