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Sunday, April 13, 2003

By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Education Writer

Anyone who's watched Pittsburgh school board meetings over the past seven years knows the routine.

	School board President Darlene Harris is noted for asking questions, a lot of questions, during board meetings. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

Someone asks if there are any questions. Then, all eyes turn toward board member Darlene Harris, who's usually sitting behind a stack of dog-eared papers, with a forest of colored Post-It notes sticking out of the pile.

That's because Harris, who is board president for the first time this year, almost always has questions. A lot of questions.

Her barrages of inquiries have earned her many critics over the years. They accuse her of trying to micromanage the school district, a charge that has been leveled more frequently since Superintendent John Thompson arrived in Pittsburgh three years ago.

Her supporters say she is just being a thorough watchdog who protects the district's finances and raises issues that others are afraid to broach.

It's no secret that Thompson and Harris don't like each other. Many of her probes are aimed at him, directly or indirectly. In fact, Harris, 50, of Spring Hill, said she gets many of her queries from people inside the school system who are afraid of Thompson.

"When people don't have all the information they need to make decisions, they give me questions or give me information," she said. "No one will ever find out who those people are, but they are grateful that I care that much about the school district and the children."

Harris' critics say her questions are not just the signs of a detail person, though, but reflect a philosophy that includes strong support for neighborhood schools at the expense of racial integration and a skepticism toward many newer reform programs, particularly in math.

"I think she has a viewpoint and I think she looks for things to bolster her point of view and rejects information that doesn't agree with her point of view," said Randall Taylor, a member of the board's minority faction.

The box lunch debate

Much of the time, Harris' questions seem to be the ultimate exercise in nitpicking, her critics add.

During a February meeting, for instance, Harris began asking Thompson questions about spending $1,500 to buy box lunches for marching band and choir members who had been asked to perform at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, which led to this exchange:

Harris: "I was wondering, since it is a school day and a lot of our students receive breakfast and receive lunches, aren't they provided through Food Services?"

Thompson: "They were invited by the governor to come to this particular performance and they needed to have food for the students. I didn't question them when they said the students needed food."

Harris then asked whether the school system provided lunches for field trips and was told that the typical fare was a peanut butter sandwich and a piece of fruit.

Harris: "Well, I would like to check on that before you take money out of the account. But the other thing is that often when you are invited, there is lunch provided. I know that when Harrisburg a lot of times invites residents up or seniors or just about anyone, they do provide lunch, and I was wondering, was there any possibility that they would be providing lunch for our students since they invited our students up?"

Thompson: "Mrs. Harris, we will check into all of that, but in the meantime, I want to be prepared. If the kids need lunch, we will provide them a lunch other than peanut butter or whatever. These are teenagers and they are representing the school district. ... I will check into it and if we don't need the money, we won't spend it."

Harris: "And also check with Food Services about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I know they have other things than that, and I know a lot schools take these lunches when they go out on trips."

Thompson: "Madam Chair, board members, please, once again, these are our students. ... If they need the $1,500, we will go ahead and do it. If we can do something else to offset that, we will do it. But we need to make sure our kids are going to be taken care of."

Harris: "But I think we should check on that before we vote on it."

Thompson: "Well, Mrs. Harris, we will check on it. Thank you."

Harris: "Thank you."

'Conscience' of majority

Harris' supporters say this kind of exchange simply show that she is being conscientious and looking out for the interests of parents and students.

Jean Fink, the previous board president and a friend, said Harris was the "conscience" of the board's five-member majority.

"She always makes sure you do what you said you're going to do. She's the follow-up person, the one that holds your feet to the fire. I'm a procrastinator. If I forget something, she nags the hell out of me. ... I was never able to step into the role [of president] as it should be. I think Darlene is doing a better job than I did."

Harris doesn't confine her questions to board meetings.

She is known for peppering administrators with requests for information and for visiting schools frequently.

"The only way to learn what the problems of the district are is to be out in the schools," she said. "I don't know of one of the schools in my district that hasn't been pleased to see me."

Harris also takes the district home with her. Stacks of papers on the school district, community issues and, most recently, her re-election campaign, line the walls of her living and dining room. She points to boxes filled with papers that start in her kitchen and go beyond sight.

"Forests have died for that woman," Fink joked.

"I read constantly," Harris said. "I probably read more than any board member before making a decision or I won't make a decision."

She believes her efforts have benefited the district, particularly in the area of finances.

She complained about fat in the district administrative budget even before she was elected to the board in 1995. Since her faction on the board became the majority in December 2001, she said, it has reduced the school administration's budget requests by nearly $12 million over past two years.

After Harris asked to review of the use of district purchasing cards last spring, school officials discovered that former Deputy Superintendent Paula Butterfield had improperly used her district card to cover housing expenses for a visiting consultant. That led to Butterfield's resignation.

Harris noted that an accounting firm she and other majority members hired last year over the objections of their colleagues found in an audit last month that the school district had higher reserves than it had announced over the past four years. The underreporting of reserve funds played a big part in the previous board majority pushing through a set of school closings and tax increases two years ago, she said.

But Harris' detractors say the reserve fund dispute is a good example of how her bias against the administration has caused her to exaggerate minor problems.

School officials said the higher-than-expected reserves that showed up in the audit weren't the result of any misleading information from the administration. While some accounting improvements are needed, they said, the simple fact is that annual projections had been conservative, and lower expenses and higher revenues increased the amount in the reserves.

Her civic roots

People who've known Harris for decades say she throws herself wholeheartedly into any organization she's involved in.

That trait goes back to her days with the Spring Hill Civic League, a North Side group she served as president, and a variety of school district and community committees.

Over the years, Harris has joined in protests ranging from opposing plans to have a Northview Heights vice principal split her time with another elementary school, to opposing proposals to close the Troy Hill fire station.

She once got a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter to climb up the steep hills of her neighborhood under the summer sun to show him how a proposal to replace a 316-foot radio tower with one nearly three times as high would disrupt the "country living within the city" that she and her neighbors wanted to preserve.

"She has a strong personality and she doesn't give up," said Chuck Klinger, president of the Spring Garden Neighborhood Council. "She does her homework. This lady once had six phones in her home, and people could call her any time."

Part of the sniping at Harris has been based on the idea that she is a front for other politicians in the city who want to influence school affairs.

One person some say is Harris' consistent behind-the-scenes adviser is Michele Balcer, an Arlington activist who worked several years in city Controller Tom Flaherty's office and is now an aide for state Sen. Jay Costa.

Balcer, who was president of the Arlington Civic Council for many years, has known Harris for more than two decades because of their work with neighborhood associations.

Balcer said she talked with Harris and other board members about issues that concern her and, if they ask her opinion, she gives it. But she said with a laugh that she certainly doesn't "craft questions" for Harris. "Darlene's her own person."

When it comes to getting questions from employees in the schools, Harris acknowledges that she encourages that process.

Last fall, she sent out letters to district administrators, asking them about their concerns and if they have ever felt pressured not to make their complaints known.

Harris said she used the information she gleaned from her survey as background for making decisions. She won't go into detail about her findings, but said they included complaints about paperwork and meetings away from school.

Harris said efforts such as the confidential survey were designed to build morale among employees who believe they have nowhere else to turn. But her critics contend that she's grabbing for control rather than trying to work with Thompson and other administrators.

Board member Alex Matthews said it was Harris, with her interviews of principals and other staff members, who intimidates employees, not the superintendent.

The mayor's worry

Even Mayor Tom Murphy, a North Side resident who's known Harris for nearly 30 years and who contributed $1,000 to Harris' last campaign, said he had been concerned about what sometimes looks like micromanagement by Harris and other board members and by the apparent lack of trust between the administration and the majority faction.

"I don't think a board should be involved in the day-to-day operation of any organization," he said. "There has to be a matter of trust. In this case, both sides may need to share the responsibility and the blame."

One of the underlying tensions in the conflict between the five-member majority and four-member minority factions on the school board is race.

Harris, who is white, has been criticized by some of her colleagues and some black leaders in the city for her staunch support of neighborhood schools. That position, along with her sometimes-volatile relationship with Thompson, who is black, has raised questions about her racial sensitivity.

But Ken Barbour, who is black and has a doctorate in education administration, said that when he was principal of West Side Traditional Academy and Harris' children attended there, his interaction with her was always positive.

"I never sensed a problem with race," he said. "She was interested in the quality of education for her children and all the children at West Side. She came to the school and volunteered and was a very good, supportive parent."

Harris herself said she had "never seen color in a person" and that since she assumed the presidency, she had been trying to get board members to go through mediation to work through their differences.

But Taylor said he believed Harris also has an anti-intellectual and class bias that fuel a desire to exercise control by proving "people with advanced degrees don't know more than regular folk."

Harris graduated from Perry High School -- as did her husband and three children, she'll proudly tell those who ask -- and from the Median School of Allied Health Careers, where she studied to be a dental hygienist. Most recently, she worked as an administrative assistant to former state Sen. Leonard Bodack Sr., D-Lawrenceville.

She likes to highlight her humble beginnings. From the deck of her fairly modern Spring Hill home, Harris can point to the small frame house where she was raised. It sits in a wooded hollow directly behind her current residence.

"I grew up very, very poor. ... The majority of the people and children in my district are poor and someone has to speak for them," she said.

"I'm just a person who likes to get things done, a person with common sense who cares deeply about the school district and the city of Pittsburgh. It doesn't matter how many degrees you have. You need common sense."

Carmen Lee can be reached at clee@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1884.