ORANGE : Consultant Hired to Find Superintendent

The Board of Education has hired a consultant for a nationwide search for a new superintendent for the Orange Unified School District.

Rudy Gatti, who works out of the San Francisco Bay Area, handed board members a schedule that will have finalists selected by Aug. 15, just in time for the 1994-95 school year.

The 26,000-student district has been without a superintendent since April and will lose its acting superintendent at the end of June. Seven superintendents have come and gone since 1989.

The board recently has grappled with a strike by classified workers, a sexual harassment suit, a $1.7-million budget deficit and a continuing turnover of administrators, but Gatti told them they should not feel bad.

“I have been a trustee for the Oakland Unified School District and you have very few problems compared to what Oakland has gone through,” he said.

Gatti will place advertisements in state and national trade magazines by June 27.

David Reger, president of the Orange Unified Education Assn. Inc., also asked board members to bring the community into the selection process.

“I fear you have not learned from mistakes of the past,” he told the board. “Please let the public be involved the (decision) week of Aug. 15.”

Gatti was superintendent of the Santa Clara schools from 1974 to 1989 and he has found administrators for schools in Torrance, South San Francisco, San Rafael and Santa Barbara, he said.