Schools Chief Gets High Marks Quiet Changes Address Audit’S Criticisms

State Superintendent of Schools Marilyn Howard has quietly reorganized the Idaho Education Department, without any of the outcry that accompanied her predecessor’s first year in office.

Instead, as Howard approaches her second legislative session, legislators, Board of Education members and school district officials say the department is running smoothly, with a focus on education, not politics.

“She’s done a grand job,” said Tom Dillon, who has served on the state board for five years. “The working relationship between the department and the board is the best I’ve seen it.”

Last week, the state board approved Howard’s reorganization plan unanimously, without any discussion or dissent. The support came despite the fact Howard’s plan eliminated one top deputy’s job and demoted another, to create a flatter structure that gives six bureau chiefs more responsibilities.

“I’m of the school of thought that the government which governs least, governs best,” said Harold Davis, chairman of the state Board of Education. “I think it’s nice when people in those assignments can find more efficient ways of delivering government to people and not have so much overhead.”

Idaho’s Education Department has 109 employees, down from 112 in predecessor Anne Fox’s first year. Thirty-three left the department during Fox’s first 10 months in office, compared with 14 during Howard’s.

Howard said people expected her administration to make some changes. She eliminated two positions when she took office, a special projects position and a lower-level supervisor, both fairly recent Fox appointees. Howard used the money to add a reading specialist.

Several months later, when she started her reorganization, she eliminated two more jobs, one for a nutrition supervisor whose duties were rolled into other positions, and the other for a top deputy. Former Deputy Superintendent Jerry Pelton left the department to become school superintendent in Pocatello.

The employees had four to six weeks’ notice, and Howard said she made a point of involving the department staff in discussions leading to the reorganization.

“The reality is this is an agency where people work together,” she said. “Because the dialogue was already comfortable, it was not a problem to say we’re taking out really two layers of this diagram.”

She added, “We also tried to be open in terms of letting people know the directions we were going, and that it’s not personal, these are philosophical kinds of moves in order to achieve certain goals.”

The reception that Howard’s changes have received is in marked contrast to that encountered by Fox, a former North Idaho educator.

Fox was sharply criticized by educators and legislators for firing a key finance worker just as a complicated payment to school districts had to be developed.

Dillon said Fox is “a very nice person,” but said, “There were a series of misadventures, some attributable to her and some attributable to chance.”

In addition to axing a raft of former Superintendent Jerry Evans’ staffers, Fox, who like Evans was a Republican, also had to fire some of her own key appointees. One had falsely claimed a college degree and 25 years of school construction experience on his resume, and another had been accused of soliciting sex from a minor in exchange for drugs while teaching in Alaska.

Under Howard, there’s been less talk about the department’s staffing and operations and more about education policy.

“It’s certainly quieter,” said Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint.

Howard is a Democrat in a state where both the Legislature and most statewide offices are dominated by Republicans. But that fact seems to have faded into the background, rather than becoming a focus for political confrontation.

“I think she wants to be an educator rather than a politician,” said Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “I think she wants to look at what’s best to do for the children, rather than what’s a party position.”

Post Falls school superintendent Richard Harris said, “She listens and is very concerned about what happens in the local schools, and has been very responsive to our needs. I’d give her an A-plus.”

The accolades bounce right off Howard, a longtime educator and former Moscow school principal who upset Fox at the ballot box last November. Before making the run for state office, Howard was little known outside education circles.

She says her definition of politics involves helping Idahoans key in to what’s important in schools.

“I tend to talk to people about goals, why we do things the way we do them,” she said. “Very often, that’s basically apolitical.”

When Ada County’s Democratic Party held its biggest bash in years, bringing in the wives of both of the party’s leading presidential candidates, Howard was absent. She was at a state Board of Education meeting in Lewiston.

“That was sad - I would have liked to have met all those people,” she said. “It was totally impossible to do. We were in Lewiston, and the agenda required my presence.”

One move that has helped Howard succeed was her decision to bring in retired Meridian school superintendent Bob Haley to help during the legislative session. He and Howard’s chief deputy, Bob West, each focused on one house of the Legislature, allowing other department staffers to continue their regular work.

Haley is well-known to lawmakers for his help in reworking the state’s school distribution formula in the early 1990s.

“There was a lot of savvy,” Schroeder said.

A legislative audit of the department completed this fall turned up some problems with employees working excessive overtime - one had worked 596 hours - and various paperwork problems. All occurred before Howard took office, and the audit reported that Howard has corrected them all.

Jerry Evans, the Republican who preceded Fox and served as Idaho’s school superintendent for 16 years, said it takes a certain mixture of collaboration and leadership to be successful in the job. “I think there’s a lot of listening involved, a lot of providing a certain amount of leadership to bring the various forces and perspectives together so you can get something done, rather than always being in some kind of stalemate or stand-off of some kind.”

Howard’s approach is the right one, Evans said. “Things are much less contentious, and she shows a willingness to listen and work with others, and to resolve conflicts rather than exacerbate them.”