In his 11 years as Howard County's school superintendent, Michael E. Hickey has won high praise for running a school system that tops the state in achievement.
But he has also been on the receiving end of tongue-lashings from parents and teachers angered by his decisions to cut salaries, redistrict schools, slash long-standing programs and transfer administrators.
Now the 56-year-old educator, one of two finalists for the top school post in Wake County, N.C., is in the limelight over whether he will run Howard's 36,000-student school system for a fourth four-year term that would begin in 1996.
Fear that he may leave for the Wake post prompted the Howard school board to offer him reappointment Thursday night. The board had earlier planned to wait until it finished his annual evaluation in a few weeks.
Dr. Hickey had said in June that he wanted to stay in Howard County for another four-year term.
Dr. Hickey -- in Raleigh, N.C., this weekend to look over the Wake schools -- did not immediately respond to the board's offer, according to Susan Cook, Howard's board chairwoman.
There are some Howard residents who want to see him go.
"I have not been impressed with his performance in terms of putting the students' needs at the top of the list," said Carol Bradley, a parent who unsuccessfully lobbied to get gymnastics reinstated as a high school sport in 1993. "He showed poor leadership. He wasn't willing to compromise."
"I'd like to see a change," said Pat Flynn, a North Laurel parent, still upset over teacher pay cuts in 1991. "I think he's been here long enough. Maybe he needs a change, and Howard County needs a change."
Praise from many
But there are many who want him to stay.
"He has tremendous foresight and is very progressive," said Jan Smyers, past chairwoman of the school board's citizens advisory committee. "The reason Howard County is so successful is because of that. If it doesn't come from the top, it's not going to happen."
Mary Toth, head of the Howard County Arts Council, praised Dr. Hickey for developing a more defined and sequential art curriculum for county students. She said that without his vision, the county and the school system never would have been able to agree to build a state-of-the-art performing arts theater at Wilde Lake High School, now under reconstruction.
"Dr. Hickey has always been open to new ideas, and that's been very valuable," she said.
'Overall quality'
During his tenure, Dr. Hickey oversaw a school system that won statewide recognition for its innovative programs, such as four-period schedules and human relations initiatives.
"The overall quality of the instructional program is one of the things I'm most proud of," Dr. Hickey said in an interview last week. "That's been the people I have hired and promoted and put in leadership positions."
'A long way to go'
Dr. Hickey is credited with fostering strong parent involvement in the schools and school-business partnerships. More than 150 businesses have signed up to volunteer personnel and services to help the county's 57 schools since 1986.
"It's started and grown to the point where it's not a limited partnership, but partners are more than willing to get into the school building and roll up their sleeves and do whatever is necessary," the board's Ms. Cook said.
In an interview last week, Dr. Hickey calls his "biggest disappointment" his inability to close the achievement gap between black and other students. "I've not been able to do more to do that," he said. "Although we've made some gains, we still have a long way to go."
The BSAP program
Dr. Hickey started a Black Student Achievement Program (BSAP) in 1986 to boost black students' performance. But black students still have the lowest test scores and a disproportionately higher suspension rate.
"He really has tried," said Bobbie Crews, head of the BSAP's parent advisory council. "But as anything goes, it may be a little bit too late. He really did try to do the best in his power."
Dr. Hickey was in Wake County Friday and yesterday, meeting teachers, students and staff. Wake school officials tried to entice him with a much larger system with an urban-suburban mix, in a fast-growing, affluent county rated "most livable" in the nation by Money magazine.
"I thought he was a very good fit for the county," said Susan Jernigan, the Charlotte-based consultant who found him for Wake County. "They'd like to be No. 1 in everything too. I think he's the right person to get them there."
Tough competition
Dr. Hickey faces tough competition from Wake County's other finalist, 50-year-old Jim Surratt, a North Carolina native who heads a 37,000-student suburban school system near Dallas. Wake school officials have said they would like a native of their state to become superintendent.
There is much to keep Dr. Hickey in Howard -- foremost, a strategic planning process he started last year to have thousands of school employees and county residents chart a course for the school system into the next century. And there's the continuing challenge of helping the school system deal with its explosive growth.
Dr. Hickey's salary has increased more than 70 percent to $115,750 since he came to Howard County from St. Louis Park, Minn. Should he be offered the North Carolina job, the salary likely would be more than he makes now.
Career highlights
Among the lows and highs of his career in Howard:
* 1984: After an exhaustive nationwide search, Dr. Hickey won the job as superintendent of the school system, which had 24,000 students.
* 1985: He launched the ambitious "Toward the Year 2000" project, enlisting more than 300 volunteers and staff members to help outline a course for the school system into the next century.
Among the 150 recommendations were suggestions to begin before- and after-school programs for students with working parents, employ teachers year-round and develop closer ties with parents and businesses.
* 1986: Parents and community members roundly criticized him for spending $21,000 to spruce up his office -- part of an effort, he said, to make visitors feel more comfortable. He later agreed to take a $4,500 deduction in his salary, then $72,000 a year, to defray the cost of the remodeling for county taxpayers.
* 1987: Dr. Hickey was cited for the second time in six years as one of 100 outstanding school managers in North America by the Executive Educator, a trade publication.
* 1988: He came to the defense of an 8 percent raise he proposed for himself and his associate superintendents, saying they have become a "convenient scapegoat" for those seeking "easy budget cuts."
* 1989: The board passed Dr. Hickey's "no pass, no play" policy, prohibiting students from playing sports and participating in extracurricular activities unless they maintain a "C" average. Dr. Hickey's policy made Howard the first county in the Baltimore metropolitan area to have a requirement of a 2.0 grade average for participation in extracurricular activities.
* 1990: A task force he formed recommended the teaching of values, such as honesty and integrity, in schools.
Another task force recommended that the system move toward school-based management.
* 1991: An economic crunch forced Dr. Hickey to slash more than $8 million from the budget, taking away teachers' salary increases. In response, teachers implemented a "work-to-rule" policy, refusing to perform extracurricular activities.
* 1992: Dr. Hickey's 10 percent pay raise, raising his salary to roughly $109,000, angered teachers who had lost their pay increases because of budget cuts. The county's human relations director quit after two black parents told Dr. Hickey and the board that racism existed in the county schools.
* 1993: Dr. Hickey and his staff divided Columbia and Ellicott City parents with a redistricting proposal shifting hundreds of students from Centennial High School to underenrolled Wilde Lake High School. Months later, Dr. Hickey started an uproar with his decision to shuffle more than 50 administrators and teachers to different schools and to cut interscholastic gymnastic and golf programs.
* 1994: Saying his "Toward the Year 2000" plan had too many recommendations, Dr. Hickey launched "Beyond the Year 2000," second strategic plan to come up with less than 10 initiatives for the school system.