One Systems Manager's Informal Conduct.

Stephen W. Daeschner

A newspaper pundit recently described Steve Daeschner as having "all the glitz of an unzipped gym bag crammed with yesterday's unwashed gear."

Daeschner, superintendent of the Jefferson County, Ky., Public Schools, says he takes no offense to such a characterization. More so, he's tickled that someone would even notice his modest athletic accomplishments as a semi-regular on the triathlon circuit.

"I can sweat like anything and still be comfortable ... an hour later with a CEO crowd," he says. "My style is to get it done, and I'm probably not as finished as people might like me to be at times.

Judy Moutardier, president of the district's PTA, puts it this way: "If you were sitting in a room with him and didn't know which one was the superintendent, you wouldn't pick him out."

Since he came to Jefferson County in the summer of '93 after seven years as superintendent in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daeschner, 52, has used his "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" approach to pull off some significant changes in a district already recognized nationwide as one of the more progressive school systems.

To Daeschner, the most satisfying initiative involves early childhood education. This fall, all of Jefferson County's 87 elementary schools will offer full-day kindergarten programs. Only two did last year. Another elementary school will become the first in the state with a year-round calendar.

Daeschner says he learned from educational research (as director of research, evaluation, and planning for St. Louis Public Schools in the mid-1970s) about the optimum assignment of limited dollars. "It's so darn hard to remediate students at the high school or middle school level [without] spending tons of money."

Consequently, in one of his first bold budget strokes, Daeschner sold the school board on moving more than $1.5 million in Chapter 1 funds from middle and secondary schools to early-childhood development programs, where research suggests, he says, "you get the biggest bang for the buck."

Daeschner faced resistance to the same funding priorities in Cedar Rapids, where he had to overcome the objections of his board president to convert the kindergarten program from half-day to full-day. There he also started programs for preschoolers who were at risk of entering kindergarten several years behind their peers in development.

When the district considered whether to try cooperative learning, Daeschner volunteered to teach a semester-long biology course using cooperative methods--an experience he now ranks near the top of his most challenging professional assignments. Once the pace settles down in Jefferson County, he hopes to commit some time again to classroom duty, though he did manage to visit with staff and students at 50 of the county's 153 schools in his first year.

One thing his Kentucky colleagues already have discovered is his informality and laid-back style. Moutardier tells the story of the time earlier this year when Daeschner dropped into a PTA committee meeting to discover the only vacant chair at the head of the table. "He made me move," she says. "He didn't want to sit there. He doesn't act like the top dog."

At his Monday morning cabinet meetings at the central office, Daeschner may set aside as much as an hour to discuss a chapter from books on organizational management by Peter Senge and Peter Block. He likes to engage principals and other stakeholders in wide-ranging discussions about ideals and vision. An adherent to total quality applications, he believes strongly in participatory, data-driven decision-making.

Of his "stewardship approach" to school district management, Daeschner says, "People need to be involved and ought to know each other's jobs to know what's going on."

Over the next year he needs to figure out how much autonomy to extend to the site-based decision-making councils that are required to be functioning in every school by 1996 under the Kentucky Education Reform Act.

"The bottom line is we need to ask the question, 'What's good for kids?'" Daeschner says. "As adults, we need to adjust our behaviors. That's difficult to do."