The school board appointed Carmen Garcia, Superintendent Carl Cohn’s former special assistant, as the new principal of Roosevelt Middle School on Tuesday. Garcia was among the list of “Cohn’s Clones,” previous acquaintances of the superintendent he brought with him to the district, included in my story about a controversial communications consultant hired by the San Diego Unified School District.
Garcia was Cohn’s former doctoral student at University of Southern California and also worked with him at the Long Beach Unified School District.
Board member Mitz Lee voted against her appointment during a closed hearing on personnel decisions.
Arun Ramanathan, the district’s executive director of government relations, will now also serve as Cohn’s special assistant. He previously worked with Cohn when the superintendent was appointed as an independent monitor of Los Angeles Unified by a federal judge. He recently finished his Ph.D. work at Harvard.