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Finance chief favored to lead schools

Chuck Rushe is described by many as cool under pressure and business savvy. But will his behind-the-scenes effectiveness translate to votes?

The Pasco County school bus fleet was a wreck, demanding almost daily towing. Drivers and mechanics were mutinous. Parents fumed as buses arrived late at their children's stops or not at all.

When someone used a beer can as a spare part in repairing a bus, things hit bottom.

So in 1979, Pasco schools superintendent Tom Weightman tapped a little-known 30-year-old accountant named Chuck Rushe to try to sort through the mess.

"He didn't know the front end of a school bus from the back end of one," recalls John Long, Pasco's current superintendent and a long-time Rushe colleague.

Under Rushe's charge, the transportation department installed two-way radios in buses for the first time. It switched to diesel fuel, doubling gas mileage. With overhauled routes, buses started serving three schools a day, where before they had struggled to serve two.

"The way Chuck turned it around, I always thought that was amazing," Long said.

These days, the troubles facing the school district, where Rushe has announced he'll run for superintendent when Long retires in 2004, are less about buses and more about The Boom.

In the next five years, thousands of young families will likely move into the county's bedroom communities, enriching Pasco's enrollment by about 2,000 students a year.

They'll need teachers to teach them, principals to lead them and schools to house them.

And Rushe, the school district's main money man for more than 20 years, is the early favorite to succeed Long in leading one of the 100 largest school districts in the United States.

"Chuck's an excellent business man and understands the finances of the school district," said Mike Park, the county transportation director who has worked for Rushe for 20 years.

"We're to the point now where we don't need an educator as superintendent. We're a large business. We employ a lot of people."

Rushe's candidacy comes at the right time in American education. Districts everywhere are broadening their search beyond the ex-sports coaches, principals and doctors of education who have filled superintendents' ranks for decades.

Often mentioned is John Fryer, the unconventional head of the school system in Jacksonville and Duval County. He's a former major general in the Air Force. San Diego hired a district attorney. Los Angeles scooped up the former governor of Colorado.

Many insist Rushe's expertise is right for a district trying to bankroll school construction on a dwindling supply of land, pay teachers competitively and lobby for a 1-cent-on-the-dollar increase in the sales tax.

"I've got a lot of sweat equity in the system. I've grown up with the system. It's a big piece of my life," the 54-year-old father of three said from his office on U.S. 41, where he manages the district's $580-million budget. "Because of the issues we're going to face, I think I'm best qualified."

Comparatively taciturn where Long is talkative, Rushe's job over the next year is to boost his visibility in what is sure to be a contested race for superintendent, said Long, a Democrat who makes no bones about supporting the Republican Rushe.

"I'm a people person. Chuck's an accountant. But he's a real nice guy. When people meet Chuck or hear him speak, people like him," Long said.

Unflappability, strength, analytical ability: All mentioned as Rushe qualities by the people interviewed for this story. His wife, Trinity Elementary School principal Kathryn Rushe, said they've never had a fight in 33 years of marriage. Disagreements, yes. Shouting matches, no.

Liz Geiger has interacted with Rushe for years, first as teachers union president haggling over numbers, then as lobbyist for teachers in Tallahassee, where her goals were the same as Rushe's in getting more money for Pasco.

"He always seemed to me a little bit laid back, but he always knew the numbers. He didn't get excited over anything," said Geiger, who serves on the Zephyrhills City Council.

Long said Rushe has been in the room "when every major decision has been made in the past 25 years," including tempestuous bargaining sessions with teachers and principals.

"He's one of the nicest guys in the world," Long said. "But the guy's got a backbone of steel. He's as tough as nails."

Even his Saturday morning golf partners vouch for his lack of excitability on the greens and fairways. He's not one to pitch his golf clubs into a swamp in frustration.

Yet his even-keeled personality could be a disadvantage in a political campaign in which regaling crowds is a plus.

Unlike the School Board, where candidates run without pressing party affiliation, superintendents' races are partisan. Rushe estimates he'll have to raise $90,000 to pay for mass mailings and other political ads.

Another possible drawback is that Rushe, as a numbers cruncher, has largely worked behind the scenes, leaving much of the glad-handing to the more loquacious Long.

"With John Long I can kind of remember the first time when I met him. With Chuck, he was sort of always there," Geiger said.

Long encourages his heir apparent to visit the district's 57 schools more often, meet teachers and parents and polish his public speaking before groups such as the Rotary Club.

Also important is soothing the large part of the electorate that is retired. Historically, that demographic is most critical of school taxes, and, by extension, school spending.

"I told Chuck, "Run like you're dead last, you have no money and they're going to vote next week,' " Long said.

Rushe is taking the advice to heart. In March, two days after Long formally announced he wouldn't run in 2004, Rushe set up a political committee. About $7,000 in contributions have arrived.

A rumor that Republican state Rep. Heather Fiorentino, a teacher, would run for superintendent appears not to have materialized.

Rushe has courted state Sen. Mike Fasano, who sits atop Pasco's GOP establishment. They've agreed to meet for a longer chat when the current legislative session ends about June.

For a man who sits atop the school district hierarchy, Rushe came from humble, blue-collar beginnings.

Charles Sylvester Rushe was born in 1948 in the Pennsylvania steel mill town of Whitaker. His father and mother owned a tavern popular with mill workers called The Spot Lounge.

"We're talking men drinking boilermakers at 8 in the morning when they got off of the late shift," Rushe recalls.

He met his future wife at their alma mater of Salem College in West Virginia. The couple married three months after graduation, and Chuck took a job with the accounting firm of Councilor, Buchanan & Mitchell near Washington.

The Buchanan in the corporate name is the father of political commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. Rushe said he played softball with Pat Buchanan's brother, Jack.

The Rushes followed Kathy Rushe's parents to Florida in 1974. Chuck was immediately struck by the constant blue sky. It was an improvement over the soot-choked air of his youth near Pittsburgh.

So much so that when asked if he liked growing up in Pennsylvania, Rushe replies: "I didn't know any different."

Rushe's first, brief job in Florida was with a concrete mixing company. Answering a newspaper ad, Rushe took a job as an accountant with the school system in 1975.

Though the district then was turbulent with labor strife and forced double sessions for students, its enrollment of about 13,000 seems quaint compared to today's 52,000.

His career climb was swift. In 1977, still in his 20s, he became assistant finance officer. After helping overhaul the transportation department in 1979, he assumed the job he's held ever since, though the title and job description have changed over the years.

The Rushes raised three children, all graduated from Pasco schools: Steven, 27, Brian, 25 and Karyn, 23. The family's home since the 1970s is a 10-acre lot in the Golden Acres neighborhood west of Moon Lake Road.

Their semi-rural spread allowed the Rushes to raise farm animals, an era Rushe said thankfully ended with his kids leaving home.

"I've done the pigs, cows, chickens and horses. Only the dogs are left," he said. "And when they're gone I probably won't replace them."

A glance around Rushe's school district office betrays one of his biggest passions: golf. There's a framed photo of the Augusta National golf club in Georgia, a golf pencil holder, a coffee table book called Golf Legends and a rack filled with dimpled white balls.

After some of his 12-hour days, Rushe unwinds by swinging at golf balls with his nine iron in the family's front pasture.

"You drive down the driveway and you run over the balls," Kathy Rushe said.

Though admittedly only a "fair" player, Rushe has played twice with fairway legend Arnold Palmer, once near his hometown in Pennsylvania and later at a fundraiser in Florida.

The job of superintendent promises to cut into his playing time. The salary might make up for the trouble. Rushe's $109,000 finance officer's salary would rise to at least the $141,000 Long made this year.

And don't expect the school district's management philosophy to change much under a Rushe administration.

Emphasis will remain on efficiently using a pot of money limited by Florida's low-tax climate. And on hiring the best people and turning them loose without too much meddling from upstairs.

"It's not a heavy-handed top-down kind of management," Rushe said. "I think we've done a lot of things right. And will continue to do things right."