By Cindy Kranz
Enquirer staff writer

The last time community leaders made a major imprint on Cincinnati Public Schools was Sept. 5, 1991, when the Buenger Commission report was released.

In March 1990, the school board approved a request by then-Superintendent Lee Etta Powell, who asked the business community to evaluate the operation of the city's public schools - then mired in bankruptcy - and recommend possible improvements.

The Cincinnati Business Committee Task Force on Public Schools created a task force named for its chairman, Clement L. Buenger, then chairman of the board of Fifth Third Bancorp.

For 18 months, the Buenger task force of more than 200 volunteers, drawn from corporations and professional organizations, spent more than 10,000 hours examining almost every facet of management of the city's public school system.

The commission set out to find answers to several questions. Among them:

• Are tax dollars earmarked for education being spent wisely?

• Do our schools provide the quality of education we all expect and want?

"The answers are discouraging," the 70-page report said. "CPS, in fact, is a system in trouble. It is an organization plagued with problems: political discord, inefficient management, antiquated systems and an administrative structure that has the tendency to maintain the status quo.

"The Buenger Commission concludes that the time has come for sweeping, fundamental change in the way CPS is managed and held accountable to the general public. The entire Cincinnati Public School System must be opened up and transformed from a top-down pyramid into an organization focused on individual schools and administered by professional managers who are given the incentives - and the responsibility - to produce superior educational performance."

The report detailed recommendations for improvement.

Among the lasting changes at CPS as a result of the Buenger report was the hiring of a business manager who took business responsibilities off the superintendent's back, said Brewster Rhoads, a Cincinnati political strategist who has managed many tax-levy campaigns.

Overall, the major legacy was decentralizing the school district, he said.

"Basically, there's a cultural shift that still exists. People closest to the issues and challenges - teachers, parents and principals - make most of the decisions," Rhoads said.

"The administration was tremendously top heavy. There were a lot of deputies to deputies. Clearly there was an effort to streamline decision-making."

E-mail ckranz@enquirer.com