A blind eye to racism.

As Les Daniels is inclined to say, "We put on our pants, shirts and ties like everyone else." It's his way of acknowledging that he plays the cards he's been dealt as best as he knows how, in spite of racial politics that seem no less pronounced today in public education in Ole Miss than they've ever been.

Daniels is beginning his ninth year as the superintendent of the 3,360-student Greenwood Public Schools in the Mississippi Delta, one of the nation's poorest non-urban regions. He spent the previous seven years as superintendent in McComb, Miss., where he started teaching in 1965. He is the first black to head either school system.

Because at age 64 he's only a whisker away from retirement, Daniels sees no reason to dance around the disappointment he feels about the unyielding state of racial separation in the school communities he's led, a full generation now after federal court-ordered desegregation of the public schools.

"This is my job--educating boys and girls the best I can, black, white, polka dot, it doesn't matter," says Daniels. "We teach and we expect them to learn. The other things I can't change. Does it bother me? Yes. Do I get disillusioned? No. It's part of the landscape but not part of my daily life."

He has moved beyond the bitterness that followed two lopsided defeats of bond proposals to improve decaying school buildings in Greenwood when neither could attract decisive bipartisan support. He's all but buried the hurt feelings of his own abrupt ouster from the superintendency in McComb, a community in southwestern Mississippi where he once expected to spend the entirety of his career, a negotiated settlement with the McComb board requires him to be tight-lipped, though he will say, "Racism was the major reason for my departure. ... I went overnight from being (rated) outstanding to incompetent."

In Greenwood, where 100 percent of the students qualify for the federal school lunch program, Daniels has overcome the odds with a can-do attitude to bring satisfactory, if not above-average, grades from the state for schoolwide performance. Under Mississippi's unique accountability program, three of the district's six schools received at least a Level 3 rating on a five-point scale (with one elementary earning the top-shelf Level 5) for student achievement in 2003.

Those results "went against the grain," says John Henry Johnson, a former Greenwood board president for 16 years. "We did better than the (poverty) data said we would."

Daniels refuses to allow poverty to be a controlling factor in the way he wants the schools to deal with children. "Poverty is a condition, but it has little to do with a mindset. You can't let it rule you. If that's your mindset, you can't stay around Les Daniels."

To deal with the aging facilities (one elementary school was built around 1900), the superintendent has made creative use of some state funding in light of the bond referendum defeats. He opened a new middle school three years ago, replacing a 40-year-old building that was draining precious funds to patch from the instructional budget. In McComb, he eliminated a $1 million deficit in two years.

Daniels' leadership style allows site administrators to take calculated risks. Robert Sims, Greenwood's middle school principal, says decentralized decision making allowed him to introduce tutorials in math, reading and literacy and an extended-day program that improved performance for students who had been below grade level. "He's not one to stand on your shoulder," Sims says of the superintendent.

State Superintendent Henry Johnson made Greenwood one of the first school districts he visited shortly after coming to Mississippi two years ago. He says he admires the instructional leadership he sees at the top of the district and has come back for observations at least twice since. He admits Daniels' job "is made more difficult" by the segregationist thinking that lingers in Greenwood, home of an all-white, 800-student private secondary school, one of the biggest in Mississippi.

"I take what I have and I work with what's there," says Daniels, who grew up attending segregated schools in Magnolia, Miss. "Two hundred years from now this state will be the same way it is now. Race will always be a part of the problem in Mississippi."

BIO STATS: Leslie Daniels

Currently: superintendent, Greenwood, Miss.

Previously: superintendent, McComb, Miss.

Age: 64

Greatest Influence: Alvin Atkinson, principal and my typing teacher; W.C. Gordon, a coach and my social studies teacher; and Johnny Gilmore, my math and science teacher provided the father image that shaped my life as it is today. My father left my mom and me when I was only two. So these men, all educators, were there for me.

Best Professional Day: Being principal of a national model high school in McComb Miss. The U.S. Department of Education went around the country looking for high schools that were offering great educational opportunities. Only 88 were chosen, and McComb was one when I was the principal. I was invited to the White House.

Books at Bedside: Lead, Follow Or Get Out of the Way by Robert D. Ramsey; Hate, Prejudice and Racism by Milton Kleg; Too Scared to Learn by Cara L. Garcia; Five Temptations of a CEO by Patrick M. Lencioni; and Reaching Students by Vivienne Collinson

Biggest Blooper: I was invited to be the graduation speaker at a high school in the area. I accepted, recorded the date to speak and wrote the speech. I called the principal to verify the time of graduation when he informed me I was a week late. He and his superintendent drafted a state legislator who was in attendance to speak. I'm told he did a great job of filling in for me.

A Reason I'm an AASA Member: To keep up to date and knowledgeable about legislative updates, court decisions, personnel requirements, funding and budgeting information. As a superintendent, what I know and am aware of determines how far I can go.

Jay Goldman is editor of The School Administrator. E-mail: [e-mail]