County’s Female Superintendents

* We are delighted that Patricia Clark White is returning to Orange County, this time as superintendent of the Irvine Unified School District (Sept. 3).

However, for those who missed the correction Sept. 4, the county’s first female district superintendent was Cynthia Grennan, Anaheim Union High School District chief from 1979 to 1996.

Former Yorba Linda Elementary School District Supt. Mary Ellen Blanton served from 1985 to 1989, when the district unified with the Placentia District. White was superintendent in Centralia from 1981 to 1993, when she left for Encinitas.

Marie Otto, Huntington Beach High School District chief from 1984 to 1988, was the third among the early women CEOs.

JOHN F. DEAN

Orange County

Superintendent of Schools

* I was surprised to read in your Sept. 3 article that Dr. Patricia Clark White, the new superintendent in the Irvine Unified School District, was referred to as “the first woman named permanently to a school superintendent’s post in Orange County.”

In fact, there are five women superintendents in Orange County at this time (Roberta Thompson in Anaheim City, Janice Billings in Anaheim Union High School, Peggy Lynch in Brea-Olinda, Carol Riley in Buena Park, and Barbara DeHart in Westminster).

Two of those currently serving followed other women superintendents.

I was also surprised that White’s service as superintendent in the Centralia Elementary School District in Anaheim in the early 1980s was not mentioned in her list of service in Orange County districts.

JUDY W. THOMAS

Lake Forest