Story Created:
Aug 6, 2009 at 1:54 PM PST
Story Updated:
Aug 6, 2009 at 1:54 PM PST
William R. “Bill” Anton, the first Latino superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, has died.
Anton, who had been in declining health, died July 28 at an assisted-living center in Alhambra, weeks before the elementary school that bears his name will open for the first time, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was 85.
Born in El Paso on July 22, 1924, to a Mexican banker who had fled that country’s revolution, Anton and his family moved to East Los Angeles when he was 5, and his father and older siblings started an electrical shop.
After graduating from Garfield High School in 1942, he was drafted into the Army, serving as a paratrooper. After the war, he returned to East Los Angeles and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from what is now Cal State Los Angeles.
He began his career in education at Rowan Avenue Elementary School in 1952 and worked his way up the ranks of the LAUSD.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Anton filled a key role in developing the district’s Title 1 program, an effort to help low-income and minority students.
He was passed over for the superintendent’s post in 1987 when the school board chose to hire an outsider, Leonard Britton. Rather than leaving the district, Anton stayed and was instrumental in serving as an intermediary during the 1989 teachers’ strike.
When Britton resigned in 1990, Anton was hired by the school board to lead the district. He resigned after only 26 months on the job, retiring in 1992 at the age of 68 after struggling to keep the LAUSD solvent amid multibillion-dollar budget deficits. He cited a politically charged atmosphere that included a micromanaging school board and an activist teachers union, The Times reported.
Friends and colleagues remembered Anton as a tough, principled but genial and strategic fighter who put students and parents first — and especially looked out for minority children in a school system that did not always have high expectations for them, according to The Times.
LAUSD school board President Monica Garcia said he was “a man of principle who made it his mission to close the achievement gap and ensure equity for students of color.”
“[He] mentored so many Latino educators, and his life inspired many more to keep working to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles,” she said.
Anton is survived by his wife, Donnalyn, three children from his first marriage and four siblings.
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