Retired Navy Vice Admiral David L. Brewer III doesn’t hesitate to admit that becoming superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District was never his list of career goals growing up. Instead, he spent 36 years crisscrossing the globe on ships, working his way up to leadership positions around the world and in Washington, D.C. It was a long and decorated career he earned three stars and when Brewer was preparing to retire last year, he thought he would finally have the time to devote himself fully to one of his life’s passions. “I committed myself to serving disadvantaged youth in the later part of my life,” he said. So when he heard about the opening to replace the retiring LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer, Brewer on a whim applied even though he had never taught in a classroom and his educational experience was limited to his stint as vice chief of naval education and training for the U.S. Navy. Surprisingly, the search committee called Brewer in and after a series of interviews, he made it to the final five, then the final two. Then, on Oct. 12, the Board of Education approved Brewer as the next superintendent of the LAUSD despite a law going into effect Jan. 1 giving L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa more control over the system, including hiring and firing the superintendent. (The mayor, who was in Asia on a trade mission when Brewer was nominated, had wanted to have a say in who was picked as the new superintendent.) Since then, Villaraigosa and Brewer who is paid a $300,000 salary have pledged to work together to improve the district, which includes more than 700,000 students in L.A. and several surrounding cities. A week before his contract went into effect Nov. 13, Brewer, who staffers have taken to calling “the admiral” without a hint of irony, sat down with the Business Journal in the LAUSD’s downtown headquarters to talk about what he wants to fix, who he wants to help him and how the business community fits into the picture. “Did I want to be superintendent of schools?” he said. “Absolutely not. But, as will happen in life, things evolved.” Question: It’s been a month since the announcement. Where are you at right now with plans? Answer: We’re still very much in the listening and learning mode. It’s not very much learning the technical stuff. Any leader will say you have to learn the culture that you’re dealing with. There’s a different culture here politically; there’s a different culture here academically, culturally. With the number of (non-)English learners and homeless children. You have 35 fabulous schools here, 17 in the Valley, so that’s a great benchmarking opportunity right there. That fits very well with my “world class” goal. So I already have 17 of 35 schools that I know are already on the path to being world class. So my job there is to make sure they are indeed competitive globally. I want to go multilingual. Why not put Japanese, Chinese, other languages into these schools? With technology being what it is, why not create some virtual classrooms between some of our best-performing schools and some of the best-performing schools internationally? Those are some of the ideas I have right now. Q: What about the business community? A: I would like to see more partnerships with business. Clearly, I’ve got to have that. Some of my ideas are going to have to be funded outside district funds. Because we’re for the core academics. But if I want to take some of the students from a high-performing high school (on a field trip) to Singapore, I’m coming to the business community. I can’t do that out of district funds. I can’t just ask all the parents to do that. Q: Have other school districts done this type of thing, where they go to the business community? A: Absolutely. Q: What other ones? A: Seattle. John Stanford (a former Seattle Public School superintendent, who, like Brewer, came to that position in the late 1990s with no formal teaching background). A business alliance he formed. I’m probably going to do something similar to that. I don’t know exactly what. Q: But why would businesses be responsive to that? A: Because they have a stake in the education of every child (and) because you want a world-class workforce. If you have a world-class workforce, then you have a greater tax base. You now have people who can build your business. You have a better customer base. You have a lower tax base because you don’t have to pay for other things. It costs a lot of money to run an urban school because in addition to the core academics, we have to tack on sociological, mental health units, outreach coordinators, truancy officers. All of these we have to attach to that school. It costs money. Imagine if you reduce the crime in L.A. how much less you would pay in taxes. Q: Is it just money? What about businesses helping develop curriculums? A: Yes. Business academies. Having people come in as leaders. A child needs to be able to relate in the classroom what they eventually want to be in life. In the Navy, we found that the average high school graduate in this country could not balance a checkbook. So we had to add a course (about personal finance) for our sailors. I could move that back earlier and start a banking services module, say in the middle school level. But the business community is the one I’m going to depend on to come and show these children how to do their banking. Q: Why did you want this job? A: Passion. I have a passion for helping disadvantaged youth. Here are 700,000 kids, a large number of them disadvantaged. It’s the best of both worlds. We have some of the best schools in the nation here. So I can go out and touch some of the best schools and get some of the benchmarks and best practices into the poorer performing schools. It’s just a great job. SNAPSHOT – David L. Brewer III Education: Bachelor of science degree from Prairie View A & M; University and master of arts degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College, Newport, R.I. Personal: Married for 29 years to Deanie Brewer, a public school teacher in Loudoun County, Va.; daughter, Stacey, 26, a lawyer in New York. Career Turning Point: After being appointed chief engineer for the USS Okinawa, when he had to overcome racial issues and leadership challenges. Most Admired Person: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
