'No excuses'

From the start, Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso has pushed administrators and staff hard, giving them heavy new responsibilities - and expanding their possibilities

He said that's what Alonso needs to keep doing.

"If you have the right people around the table who recognize that their service on the board is not about them but about the children," Morris said, "then I think he'll do fine."

Goal of irrelevance

A year and a half into Alonso's tenure, the changes in the school bureaucracy are profound. Nearly a third of the city's principals have been replaced. More than 200 teachers who had worked for years without full certification were let go; another 250 just got warning letters. More than 300 of 1,500 jobs at North Avenue were eliminated, and some of those affected were transferred into more demanding jobs in schools for less money. Another 150 central office jobs are on the chopping block this year.

This month, Alonso is trying to fend off state budget cuts that he says would be devastating. But even if he can't do that, he says his expectations will not change.

While he hasn't really demanded 24-7 duty, he was serious about employees checking e-mail on weekends and vacations. Last spring, he sent a principal recovering from a stroke a message on a Sunday night with a 60-page draft budget document attached and a request for feedback by the next day. He didn't know of the principal's ailment, but he later said it wouldn't have mattered if he had.

As for the principal, he was honored that Alonso wanted his feedback.

Many who work for Alonso are afraid of him, and he knows it. He said he tries to communicate gratitude to his employees because "I do think that people feel vulnerable when they're with me." But when their work doesn't meet his expectations, he says so.

"I have too much respect for people to give them anything other than my best," he said. "If they give me something less than what I think the kids of Baltimore deserve, I let them know. For some people, it's devastating because they've never been in a culture where that's happened."

Susan Tibbels, principal of New Song Academy in Sandtown, marvels that she can e-mail Alonso about a problem, as she did when a teacher's hiring was held up in human resources, and he not only answers right away but gets the problem fixed.

Previous CEOs, she said, were "so much like Oz ... that the idea of even asking to speak to them would seem irrational."

Still, she added, "You can't run to the CEO every time something doesn't work."