A man who turned down the top job at the D.C. schools three years ago said he is being wooed to come here once again.

Rudolph F. “Rudy” Crew walked away from negotiations that would have made him D.C. schools superintendent in 2004. He accepted a job in the Miami-Dade County schools. But he told a television station in Miami last month that D.C. officials were courting him.

He adamantly denied that he considered taking D.C.’s job.

“It’s logical that my name would be mentioned,” Crew told a CBS affiliate in an April 13 interview. “But it’s not under consideration.”

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Crew also said San Francisco schools were recruiting him.

Crew was a top candidate to take over D.C.’s stricken schools, but he backed out of negotiations — in part because he wouldn’t control his own budget. D.C.’s unique system gives controls of school finances to Chief Finance Officer Natwar Gandhi.

Crew did not respond to a request for comment.

Mayor Adrian Fenty has refused to comment on his plans for the schools. But he has sounded out D.C. Council members on Superintendent Clifford B. Janey, Jr., who got the job once Crew backed out.

Janey was a highly touted reformer, but critics say he has been too slow and plodding in dealing with the schools’ myriad problems.

“There are some concerns about his management style,” said District Council Member Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, a former member of the Board of Education.

Since Janey took over, the schools have been rated “high risk” for federal funds, have been blasted in the city’s audit, have discovered lead in water pipes and sinks in nearly three-quarters of their buildings, and have become the subject of numerous local and federal investigations of alleged corruption and waste.

Wells said he is most concerned about Janey’s once-ambitious, $2 billion plan to consolidate and remodel the city’s schools. Enrollment in the schools has plummeted, but Janey has not shut down any schools since Fenty’s election.

“It seems like the school system has stopped making tough decisions,” Wells said.

Crew, the former chancellor of the New York City schools, has served in San Antonio, Boston and Sacramento, Calif. His tenure in Miami hasn’t been peaceful.

In January, he beat back a lawsuit from a school board member, who claimed Crew illegally withheld public documents.

“You have to have tough skin to be here,” Crew told the Miami television station last month.

bmyers@dcexaminer.com

cmabeus@dcexaminer.com