Admiral Brewer to Lead LAUSD?

By Jennifer Solis

If the Los Angeles Unified school board selects Admiral David L. Brewer III as its next superintendent, it will continue the precedent of appointing a non-professional educator to run the nation’s second largest school system.

Although Roy Romer had to deal with many educational issues during his three terms as Colorado’s governor, he was hired precisely for the same reasons that Adm. Brewer is on the short list of candidates. They both would come to Los Angeles without any pre-conceived notions of bureaucratic influence or favoritism. It should be remembered that one of Romer’s first appointments was to hire a retired Navy Seebee captain to head the multi-billion dollar facilities (construction) division.

The first e-mail I received about Brewer’s candidacy complained that we should NEVER consider “an individual that has spent [his] entire career in the U.S. military … tolerating the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.” It just goes to show that if a candidate might score positive on 99 other attributes, he should be rejected if he fails this litmus test – at least in the minds of “one issue” partisans. How ridiculous!

Brewer is the son of parents who are retired educators – as is his wife, Deanie. Their daughter, Stacey, is a law student (I hope we don’t hold that against him). The admiral says that his motto in life is “education plus motivation plus perseverance.” His late father has a building named after him at Jones High School in Orlando, Florida, where Brewer graduated.

After earning his Bachelor’s Degree at Prairie View A&M, where he attended the school’s first NROTC program, he was commissioned in 1970 as one of only 250 African-American members of an officer corps of 72,000.

His first brush with celebrity came when his family competed on the Family Feud show. After the first round, they weren’t doing too well, and David wasn’t helping. But his mom and dad led a comeback victory.

Brewer was recognized early in his naval career as an extraordinarily motivated, talented and determined officer. He was an engineer at a time when nobody wanted to be an engineer. He was promoted to Rear Admiral after only 23 years of service, and later given one of the most difficult commands in the entire military – being in charge of defense logistics.

He immediately led a team which consolidated five worldwide commands into a single, operationally focused and responsive organization, the Military Sealift Command. This command runs more than 10,000 military and civilian personnel, including 110 active ships, with the responsibility for supplying over 95-percent of U.S. military supplies.

His organization was also at the forefront of many humanitarian relief efforts, including the tsunami in Indonesia, the earthquakes in Pakistan and the Katrina hurricane on our Gulf Coast.

At his retirement ceremony in Washington last March, there were many tributes to his career, including, “the most down to earth admiral I ever met,” “No matter what the circumstances, he was kind and caring,” “always listens to the facts and does the right thing,” and “I learned more from him than any other officer.”

Whether or not Admiral Brewer is selected by the school board as our new superintendent, it is very clear that these are the kind of attributes we need to recruit for this important job.