A Zealot on the Reform Frontier.

James Bradford often feels like a pioneer on the plains in central Virginia, where he has served as superintendent of the Buena Vista City Schools for 25 years.

Like many leaders who push back the boundaries of the frontier, Bradford has endured a significant share of criticism both inside and outside the school system as he tirelessly advances his agenda for education in the 21st century. He pushes forward, just the same.

"The challenges never cease because we're trying to be on the cutting edge--year-round schools, curriculum improvement, a restructured high school, day care, [a proposed] revised calendar for K-8. It's exciting all the time," he says.

As superintendent, Bradford introduced a year-round program in the district's Parry McCluer High School in 1973, not to cope with overcrowding but to make more efficient use of students' time at school. The voluntary summer quarter allows students to remain on grade level through remediation or to gain college credits. About 63 percent of the students now take part.

This year the high school moved into block scheduling. Students take two two-hour classes each morning.

"It's taken us 100 years to get kindergarten into our schools. It's taken 150 years to get free textbooks into our schools. Now it's taking us a number of years to move from teaching classes to teaching students," he says.

While Buena Vista remains the only district in Virginia and one of the few on the East Coast with a year-round program, Bradford thinks his colleagues in the superintendent ranks are ready for such changes but are stymied in their efforts by traditional stances of school boards wedded to agrarian calendars.

In his own community, Bradford's plan to move the year-round program to the two elementary schools and one middle school has been postponed for at least two years by Buena Vista's board, half of whose members joined via the elective process last spring. Previously, all Virginia board members were appointed.

"Their level of training is [based on] what they had. It's not what the future holds," says Bradford, of board members with narrowly focused interests. "We need to get school board members trained to be futuristic."

Community leaders say that Bradford, whose entire career has been spent in Virginia, shows a fanatical zeal for school reforms. "He's a single-issue human being. His whole life and whole being is schools," says Jerry Clark, publisher and editor of the Rockbridge Weekly Press. "He has the most extraordinary commitment to a lifelong subject I've ever seen in my life."

Adds Wilford Ramsey, a former mayor: "He lives and practices his job."

Bradford justifies his stances based on research--his district's own and others--that points to the characteristics of schooling that make a difference in student outcomes. On that basis, he vehemently opposed Buena Vista's part in a consolidation of the county's school districts two years ago that merged three high schools into one.

Buena Vista remained independent, the superintendent says, "because we want to maintain control over our finances and curriculum and innovative programs.

Observes Clark: "There's only one thing on his mind: getting his way."

Bradford has been much in demand recently as a consultant, owing to his visibility in 1991 as president of the National Association for Year-Round Education and his district's inclusion in the recent report of the National Education Commission on Time and Learning. Buena Vista was one of 13 models cited.

"It's a lot of fun doing something you believe in," he says.

He also served this year as a member of the AASA Resolutions Committee that has submitted three controversial proposals to the association's Delegate Assembly in February. Bradford is especially eager to see how the proposal calling for the elimination of the comprehensive high school will play out.

"I think we've reached the point where most of my colleagues realize the schools of yesterday don't address the needs of the 21st century."