It was billed as a new beginning. The January 2009 meeting between members of the Rochester school board, City Council, and Mayor Bob Duffy was supposed to mark a new era of collegiality between the city and the school district.

But the promise of cooperation quickly disappeared. Handmade signs protesting mayoral control, some directly attacking Duffy, lined the school board's third-floor conference room the night of the meeting. Duffy joked about the interesting artwork, but he was clearly not amused. Within minutes, the meeting degenerated into a verbal firestorm with some board members pressing the mayor to be forthright about his position on mayoral control.

As the charges and countercharges flew, city schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, still new to the job, stood by expressionless and silent.

Some say the meeting was a turning point for Duffy - solidifying his views on mayoral control. But it had to also be an eye opener for Brizard, who was barely through his first year with the district.

Plainly, the people responsible for improving graduation rates and the lives of Rochester's children had one thing in common: each side blamed the other for the problems afflicting both the district and the city. They would cooperate on little.

Now, three years later, Brizard nears the end of his initial contract with the city school district. He's pushed for major reforms, but it is too soon to tell whether he has been successful; parents and students are still getting to know him. While he's embraced by the business community, many city school teachers are turned off by his reform rhetoric. Most school board members support Brizard, and the board seems poised to renew his contract. But even his allies on the board are reserved in their praise.

Board President Malik Evans says he expects to have Brizard's contract finalized before the end of this month, but things haven't gone well. A draft of the contract was leaked to the media.

"I was angry," Brizard says. "I think it was done to discredit me."

How can you negotiate in good faith, he asks, when something like this happens?

"My attorney, who has been doing this for 30 years, said he's never seen anything like it before," Brizard says. "He was livid."

The contract leak is no surprise. Though Brizard stops short of accusing anyone, he says it's not the first time that sensitive information has found its way into the media's hands.

Brizard has had a rocky go of it from the beginning. Board member Cynthia Elliott was quite public about her desire to see interim Superintendent Bill Cala stay on permanently. Cala, the well-known and respected former superintendent of Fairport schools, was brought in to hold the city organization together in the aftermath of Superintendent Manny Rivera's abrupt departure.

"I told Cynthia she had to throw her full support behind Jean-Claude," Cala says. "She didn't want to, but I said to her, ‘You want this guy to succeed, don't you?'"

Success for any superintendent, Cala says, requires the full support of every board member, "otherwise, it won't work."

Brizard prevailed in getting the job because he stood out. He holds two master's degrees. He was a regional superintendent in the New York City school system under Chancellor Joel Klein, where he supervised more than 100 K-12 schools.

He's also a graduate of the prestigious Superintendent's Academy of the Broad Center. With his Haitian accent and quick wit, he seemed to embody a superintendent for a new stage in Rochester, one that's more fitting of a global 21st century institution. When he said, in a series of public meetings, that he would raise the city's graduation rate from an abysmal 39 percent to 75 percent by 2012, he closed the deal.

Nearly three years later, Brizard insists his goal is still attainable, though it may take him a year or two longer to reach it. But it illustrates the difficult task of evaluating school superintendents. The benchmarks of success for superintendents are often elusive, and they have a tendency to morph over time. Since board members are elected officials, the body and its priorities can change with each election.

"You know the old saying in this business - the board that hires you isn't the one that fires you," Brizard says.

The changing mandates and committee of bosses help to explain, some experts say, why the turnover of superintendents is so high, particularly in large urban districts like Rochester's. The need for quick and immediate improvement in student achievement has reached such a dramatic level, it borders on the impossible. Superintendents are cycled in and out in roughly three- to five-year intervals, Cala says, with little change in student performance.

But Brizard says he's already made a vital contribution. He says he's challenged the Rochester school district's decades-old and deeply-engrained culture that assumes the fate of most city school students is pre-determined. It's been a culture tied to the belief, he says, that students are so influenced by the conditions of Rochester's pockets of extreme poverty - the city has one of the worst child poverty rates in the country - that they are limited in their capacity to learn.

The poverty-equals-failure theory is one that Brizard rejects and is determined to shatter.

"We have an internal survey conducted by CGR (Center for Governmental Research) that confirmed more than half of our teachers believed this stuff," Brizard says. "I know many people in the city measure success by graduation rates, but before we can get there, we have to change what people believe is possible. I'm not saying that we're there yet. But the culture here is changing."

No one can accuse Brizard of being timid about taking on big initiatives. The culture shift he speaks of is a trail of sharp turns away from the district's old way of doing things. Probably nothing illustrates that as well as Brizard's controversial in-house suspension program.

There were more than 11,000 out-of-school suspensions during the 2006-2007 school year, according to district data. Considering the district's student population is about 32,500, it meant that thousands of students were out of school on any given day. The suspensions were usually the result of behavior problems. But with so much classroom instruction missed, Brizard says, why would anyone expect the students to graduate on time?

"Our kids were throwaways," he says. "It's much easier to put kids out on the street than it is to deal with them."

The in-house suspension program requires students to stay in school and to receive daily instruction in a room away from their friends and classmates. While suspensions are way down in most schools, Brizard says, the program's implementation was shaky. The program is not perfect, he says, but it was a necessary shock to the system.

Teachers, students, and parents complained bitterly at a public meeting about the program. The room filled to capacity, leaving many parents standing outside the school district's Central Office.

The new suspension program also concerned board members.

"He got lots of criticism for that," board member Van White says. "The guy moves very quickly, sometimes too quickly. And he doesn't always bring his people along with him. He's like that gifted quarterback that sometimes forgets that it takes a team."

Brizard could improve his relationships with those he manages, White says.

"I'm not sure he's really in touch with teachers, principals, and the non-teaching employees or their feelings about their jobs," he says.

White may have a point. The district's relationship with labor appears to be at a low point.

"The fact is his labor relations skills are awful," says board member Willa Powell. "It's not enough to have a vision. All of our superintendents have had incredible vision. But implementation counts. And I would say he hasn't been any more or less successful than the others."

The biggest concern for BENTE members, says Dan DiClemente, president of the union that represents the district's non-teaching staff, is a sense of not being valued.

"Our members are with the kids every day," he says. "But this superintendent waves off our concerns as being a lot of noise from a staff that's resisting change. It's very hurtful to people who don't make a lot of money but are dedicated to their jobs."

"Bumpy" is the way John Pavone, 1st vice president of the Rochester Teachers Association, describes Brizard's first years in office.

"All we hear about the low graduation rate and low test scores is that it is the teachers's fault and only the teachers's fault," Pavone says. "When you constantly hear that you're to blame for all of the district's problems, no wonder teachers don't feel like partners."

One veteran teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, says he had high hopes for Brizard, but his feelings have changed.

"Teachers don't feel supported," he says. "There are a lot of promises made at the Central Office level, but not a lot of follow-through."

If he had to rate Brizard's performance on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the best, he says he would give the superintendent a 2.5.

Another veteran teacher says that "Brizard doesn't lead; he pushes." You can't expect people to do their best work when they're afraid of losing their jobs, he says.

"No one has been more aggressive and in your face than Mr. Brizard," he says. "He doesn't consult with teachers; he directs."

At the same time, the teacher concedes, some of Brizard's programs, including the in-house suspension program, appear to be working.

"I've seen a change in student behavior," he says.

Brizard's opinion of unions has always been a question because of his connection to the Broad Foundation. Eli Broad, the organization's founder, had no use for unions or school boards. But Brizard insists he isn't anti-union. He does, however, believe the district was long overdue for a conversation about teacher effectiveness.

"Ineffective teachers have learned they can outlast superintendents," he says. "They wait you out because they know that the process of ousting ineffective teachers takes so long."

The drama involved in getting rid of ineffective teachers discourages principals from doing it, Brizard says.

"Then the teacher gets tenure," he says. "And once that happens it takes three years, sometimes longer to get rid of them."

Pavone doesn't agree. He says Brizard wants to neutralize the unions.

"Let his record speak for itself," Pavone says. "He's gone to Albany and talked about the elimination of tenure. He wants to be able to hire and fire without due process. Tenure is not a guarantee of a job for life like some of these guys like to suggest; it's a guarantee of due process."

Despite the criticisms, Brizard says he wishes he had pushed even harder to reduce the district's bloated work force and to close some of the district's most poorly performing schools.

Settling on the coming school year's budget required controversial staffing cuts, including teachers, for the second year in a row. Critics charge that Brizard has not done enough to reduce the bloat in the Superintendent's Employee Group, the district's highest paid management and support staff in Central Office.

And the cuts to the teaching staff drew particularly pointed criticism because they included arts and music teachers.

"Why is it that our students in the city schools have to make these kinds of sacrifices?" says a parent and district employee with two children in city schools. "It's so disheartening. I like the superintendent. I think he's trying. But city students need the arts just as much as suburban students, maybe more."

And opening new schools and closing poorly-performing ones was a concern for some board members who remembered the problems implementing the in-house suspension program. They didn't immediately give Brizard permission to close the schools and pressed him to move cautiously.

"When he wanted to close Franklin's schools, he again started with his vision," White says. "But frankly, in my mind, what he planned to do was a bit sketchy at first."

Brizard recognizes that his time at the district has been tough on faculty and staff, but he's unapologetic. He says a tipping point is within sight and the changes he wants will be worth the bumps getting there.

"I believe in creative tension, not in anxiety," he says. "We have a crisis in education today; not just in Rochester, but in schools across the country."

Talking fervently about education reform has endeared Brizard to Rochester's business community and to City Hall.

Brizard is the best person for the job and Rochester is lucky to have him, says City Council member Elaine Spaull.

Mayor Duffy described a meeting between Brizard and City Council shortly after Brizard was hired.

"He came in and talked about his plans and what he wanted to," Duffy says. "When he finished, everyone spontaneously rose to their feet and gave him a huge round of applause."

Brizard is doing exactly what needs to be done, Duffy says.

"This is a system that hasn't been kind to our children for decades," Duffy says. "Don't get me wrong, Manny Rivera was very bright, and I actually encouraged Bill Cala to apply for the permanent job. Both are good people. But Jean-Claude is the first superintendent who is trying to transform the district. That will put him at odds with people in the system. But I think he's weathered the criticisms well."

The pairing of Brizard and Duffy, the city's two most powerful public servants, made the possibility of mayoral control of the city school district intriguing. Both men have strong, determined personalities and their admiration for each other is evident.

In those cities where mayoral control appears to have some success, it is often attributed to the combination of a progressive mayor and a reform-minded superintendent. The combination of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein in New York City is the one most often cited.

The mayoral control debate has shown Brizard's political skills. He has deftly moved around the issue without committing to one side or the other.

Though the Broad Foundation connection leaves some to assume that Brizard favors mayoral control, Brizard's quick to point out that the large urban school district with the highest graduation rate, Atlanta, Georgia, is governed by a school board.

"But that is a board that really works together," Brizard says. Rochester has some incredibly strong and effective board members, Powell says, but there are also members who are openly hostile.

"But that's the way it is," she says.

It's almost certain that the school board will renew Brizard's contract. Even board member Allen Williams, though he has several issues with Brizard's work to date, says he wants Brizard to stay.

"He would be a fool to leave without finishing some of the reforms he started," Powell says.

Brizard, who drops that he is frequently called by headhunters, says he's not worried about his contract; he wants to stay on the job.

"I don't really think they're going to find anyone better," he says.