DeFede

Crew, who came to the school district in 2004 and was voted National School Superintendent of Year, had 22 months remaining on his contract, worth a total of nearly $700,000.

The negotiations between Crew's attorney, H.T. Smith, and the school board's special counsel, Murray Greenberg, lasted throughout the day on Tuesday, and into the evening.

School Board Chairman Barrera was also heavily involved in the talks to bring Crew's time as head of the nation's fourth largest school district to a close.

The board was expected to pick Crew's replacement. The leading candidates are all from within the school district.

Individual board members had been being briefed Wednesday morning on the details of the Crew buy out, which will pay Crew about half of what he would be owed under the terms of his contract.

Crew started off negotiations by taking the position that if the school board wanted him to leave, they should pay him the entire $700,000 remaining on his contract. But that position was quickly dismissed.

There was a contingent on the board that would have liked to fire Crew and take their chances in court, but they were a minority.

Crew's attorney, H.T. Smith, did not return phone calls seeking comment. Greenberg could also not be reached for comment.

But before one gets into the speculation game of who will replace him, let's first understand how we got here.

It will be very popular in the weeks, months and years ahead to bash Rudy Crew's tenure and to overlook the innovations he brought to this school district. From the standpoint of educating our children, the district is better off today than when he started. And if that were the only measure of the superintendent's job, Crew would be fine.

But Crew made other mistakes.

First and foremost, Crew never connected with Miami. In watching Crew you always knew this was a weigh station on his path to somewhere else. Miami is a very tough place for an outsider and it is even harder on those who chose not to engage the community in a meaningful way.

Crew did a great job of courting Miami's wealthy business leaders, but he rarely found the time to establish those relationships with everyday people – including the black community.

Was it simply a matter of arrogance? There is no doubt that Rudy Crew was extremely confident in his own opinion and view of the world when it came to education. It is inspiring to hear Rudy Crew speak about the power of education and its ability to change lives. I can recall last year watching Crew on C-Span, at a book reading in Manhattan, talk for an hour about the role education plays in our society and some of the programs he had brought to Miami, and all I could think about is if he had made a concerted effort to give a series of talks like this in Miami, he would be viewed much differently here.

But instead, Crew came to Miami, took one look at the school board and immediately dismissed them as impediments rather than partners. And I can't entirely blame Crew. Let's face facts; the Miami Dade School Board is stacked with crazies, power-junkies and egomaniacs. This is not the brightest board. The school board actually makes the county commission look like a collection of Rhodes Scholars.

His impatience with various board members – no matter how justified it may have been at times – only left him viewed more and more as the perennial outsider. For the last 18 months, it appeared that Crew was looking for a way out of Miami.

He flirted with school districts in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, he was rumored to be in line for a job at a California university, and he bought a house in Seattle, leading many to speculate that he was interested in a job with the Seattle school district and/or a job with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

All of these other job possibilities ultimately weakened Crew's standing in Miami. If he had one foot out the door anyway, there were more than a few board members who would like to take credit for giving Crew a final shove.

It started with Marta Perez, who from Day One of Crew's tenure decided she was going to attack him at every opportunity. Over time other board members joined her, until finally Renier Diaz de la Portilla saw the political advantage of taking on Crew.    

Diaz de la Portilla was in a contested race for re-election, and sensing an anti-Crew sentiment in his district, feared that if he didn't start attacking Crew himself, his opponent might win. Once the election was over, and he won, Diaz de la Portilla would have dropped his campaign against Crew. He didn't want to spend his days on the board as part of the angry minority working against Crew. But then something unexpected happened.

Incumbent Evelyn Greer, a Crew supporter, lost to political novice, Larry Feldman, a retired principal backed by the teachers union which was in its own war with Crew.

Now, instead of Crew having a 5-4 majority in support of him, it turned out to be 5-3 against him.

And this is where Crew's second major mistake came into play. While he was great on the education side of things, Crew has badly mishandled the district's budget.

For months the district has been scrambling to fill a $284 million hole in the budget, and sources inside the district tell me that number may actually be much higher.

Not all of the budget problems are Crew's fault. Budget cuts in Tallahassee cost the school district nearly $60 million. In addition the rising cost of fuel, health insurance, and food has all contributed the deficit.

But there has clearly been mismanagement, as well.

There has been $28 million in unbudgeted overtime. There has been between $30 and $40 million in salaried positions not budgeted and not financially justified based on current enrollment levels.

Part of the problems is that there haven't been the necessary safeguards in place to catch some of these problems early before they grow.

During Crew's tenure, the school district was without a chief financial officer for 18 months and without a chief budget officer for nearly a year.

There are some who say Crew relied too heavily on Ofelia San Pedro, the deputy superintendent for budget and finance, but ultimately it was Crew's responsibility.

The budget mess allows those on the board who have always disliked Crew to force him out.  But as we now see, they won't have to push very hard.

As to who will replace him? The board clearly wants an insider, someone they can control and who will be more responsive (read subservient) to their desires. Besides, after the Crew debacle, and the way Miami politics is perceived by the rest of the country, you would be hard pressed to get anyone noteworthy to come down here anyway.

The next superintendent will have a tough job: A budget that will only worsen for the foreseeable future, a school board emboldened by its victory over Crew (but no smarter for it), and an angry teachers union facing even more layoffs.

Looks like Crew really was the smart one.

Another possibility rumored by some is that if Barack Obama wins the election, he might  consider naming Rudy Crew Secretary of Education, a contention the Obama campaign denies. And if that doesn't work out, he could end up in the Northwest at the Gates Foundation heading up one of their philanthropic endeavors.

Now if only he can find a buyer for that house in Miami the businessman Paul Cejas helped him to buy when he first got here, he would never again have to think about Miami.

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