ATTORNEY GOES FROM `BORDER CZAR' TO CHIEF OF SCHOOLS IN SAN DIEGO

SAN DIEGO -- Alan Bersin, who as U.S. attorney for San Diego and
Imperial counties has served as the ``border czar'' overseeing a
crackdown on illegal immigration and drug smuggling, was named Monday
as superintendent of the San Diego school system, the eighth-largest
in the nation.

Bersin, 51, succeeds Bertha Pendleton, who is retiring this summer
after 41 years as a teacher and administrator in San Diego schools.
Bersin, who has no background as an educational administrator, said he
will meet Wednesday with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to discuss
who will replace him as interim U.S. attorney for the Southern
District of California.

The school board voted 4-0 to offer Bersin a four-year contract
starting at $165,000 a year. The contract provides ``performance
incentives'' if student test scores improve. One school board member
abstained in protest of what she thought was a flawed selection system.

San Diego schools have used a variety of programs and methods to raise
the test scores of schools in low-income and minority neighborhoods
but with mixed results. Recently the school board placed 20 schools --
including one touted by President Clinton as an example for the nation
- -- on notice that test scores must improve.

When word leaked out recently that Bersin was a finalist for the
superintendent's post, a group of immigrants-rights advocates blasted
him and suggested his appointment would be inappropriate and
insensitive in a district where more than one-third of students are
Latino.

But a lineup of local leaders -- including two of the region's major
Latino leaders, San Diego Councilman Juan Vargas and La Mesa Mayor Art
Madrid -- countered with their own news conference backing Bersin.

The San Diego school system has 137,000 students and 167 schools,
making it the second-largest public system in the state, behind Los
Angeles.

Bersin was one of two finalists selected by a search committee that
had considered a YMCA executive, a real estate executive, the
president of the University of San Diego, a Latino physician, and a
black community leader and former city councilman.

The job was offered Sunday to Bersin. The name of the other finalist
was not revealed.

Bersin, a native of Brooklyn, graduated from Harvard, where he was a
star football player, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he met
Clinton, and earned a law degree at Yale in 1974. He was named by
Clinton as U.S. attorney in 1993.