Like many speakers, Superintendent Dr. Alex Cherniss began his address to San Marino City Club last Tuesday evening with a story.
“It’s fitting that I will be talking about a gym this evening,” he said. “I always wanted to be a basketball coach. Even when I was a senior in high school, I coached a junior basketball team.”
Cherniss told the audience how he mentioned his desired career path to his older brother, who was at the time a student at UCLA.
“My brother spoke to Bruin basketball Coach Jim Harrick,” Cherniss said. “Coach Harrick told my brother what I would need to do in order to be a basketball coach. The amount of time I would have to invest just to be an unpaid assistant. Of course, I also had to get into UCLA.”
“Then I went to visit U.C. Santa Barbara,” Cherniss said, pausing as a wry smile appeared on his face. “And I saw that the students had their own beach.”
Laughter swept through the San Marino Center and Cherniss didn’t need to explain any more.
“Good coaches inspire, motivate and want to see others do well,” he continued. “I enjoyed coaching so much that I wanted to coach teachers.”
Cut to present day and following stints at the Beverly Hills Unified School District and the Los Ange les County Department of Education, or LACOE, and the man who set out to be a coach is in his 3rd year as superintendent of the top-ranked unified school district in the state of California.
Before addressing current matters, Cherniss explained some of his duties at LACOE, which oversees 81 school districts including the Los Angeles Unified School District, which, with more than 700,000 students, is the largest in the nation.
“It was a fascinating experience,” Cherniss said. “There is a whole side of LACOE I didn’t know existed. Part of my responsibility was overseeing the largest incarcerated youth education program in the world.”
Cherniss explained that young people who are jailed before turning 18 are entitled to an education.
“It’s a special teacher who will teach in that facility,” he said.
Cherniss earned his doctorate at USC in 2008 and currently teaches a class there in school financing. When he saw the opening at the SMUSD, Cherniss jumped at the opportunity, knowing this community’s high regard for education.
“I am really enjoying my experience here,” said Cherniss. “This community is so special. So many of you have had children go through the school and you continue to stay involved and support the schools.”
Cherniss then turned his attention to the proposed new gymnasium just across the parking lot at Huntington Middle School.
“One of my jobs is to determine the needs of the community,” he said. “After asking around, it was clear that one of the biggest needs was a new gym at HMS.”
Cherniss mentioned that the current facility being used for a gymnasium was actually built in the 1930s as an art room.
“It’s not adequate,” he said. “If you have ever watched a volleyball game, the players have to serve from the hallway. “Right now, when it is raining or too hot, we have to cancel PE classes. So you can see this will directly impact the children’s education.”
Cherniss then showed artists renditions of the new 8,000 sq. ft. facility, for which the district is scheduled to break ground on June 1, 2017 with a completion period of 18 months.
“It’s going to be a fabulous facility,” he said as images flashed by. “The architecture will be blended into the current architecture.”
San Marino residents Andy and Avery Barth made an initial donation for the $14 million project. Last week, the board approved a $500,000 naming rights donation for the workout facility from Tim and Lisa Sloan and Jim Barger has written a check for the wrestling facility.
“There are still naming opportunities left,” Cherniss said.
The district hopes to raise $10 million in private funding for the facility. Plans are currently at the Department of the State Architect, which has already returned a first revision to the SMUSD.
During a question-and-answer period, Cherniss was asked how he felt at the beginning of the school year when the SMUSD was named as the top district for the 15th consecutive year. The question was met with spontaneous applause from the audience.
“I was happy to learn that I had a job for another year,” he joked. “But more than the ranking, I am proud of the work we have done.”
Cherniss mentioned that the district now has computer coding classes from elementary through high school and touted a popular humanities class that is taught in partnership with the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.
“We are proud, but we have not yet met our ultimate goals.”
In responding to a later question, Cherniss said “I am always looking for ways to enrich our learning experience. We are competing against schools both public and private. When I started, I looked at our resources here in San Marino and thought, ‘we have The Huntington.’”
The superintendent was then asked about his relationship with the “diverse personalities” of the current school board, 4 of whom were in the audience.
“Our board is cohesive and experienced. It’s important to have board members who understand the culture of the community,” Cherniss said. “I lean heavily on the board to troubleshoot issues before they become issues. They are also very dedicated to their job. They don’t make much money. In fact, they donate their honorarium back to the district. We owe quite a bit of gratitude to our board. There is a lot of dissent on other boards. You do not see that here.”
Cherniss also referenced a district-wide study on facility needs, the decision to make both Carver and Valentine “closed” campuses (“We did not do it to discourage parental participation, we did it to increase campus safety”) and the ongoing challenges of funding public education with little help from the state.
“We struggle every year,” Cherniss said. “If we didn’t get local support, we wouldn’t have science education, or dance, or PE.”
