Bob Vasquez has faced life-and-death emergencies in his work as a child-abuse investigator. But he says nothing else he has done caused him as much stress as his service over the past two years as president of the Toledo Board of Education.

"Everything was fast-moving, intense, high-pressure decision making," Mr. Vasquez told me last week. Citing the district's troubled finances, he added: "I would go to bed every night thinking, when is the state going to take over?"

Mr. Vasquez stepped down as president last week, although he'll remain a member of the school board. His record includes a number of solid achievements that have helped Toledo Public Schools shore up its finances, academic quality, and community image.

And while the school system still has a long way to go to meet the expectations of taxpayers, parents, students, and employers, it now seems at least to have a credible map to get there. The board's new leaders would do better to build on that foundation than to rip it up and start over.

"We've been through a crisis, we've admitted our weaknesses, but we're on the right track," Mr. Vasquez insists. "TPS is better off than it has been in a decade."

As president, Mr. Vasquez worked with schools Superintendent Jerome Pecko to develop an action plan for transforming district schools -- not just how they are organized, but also how they teach students. They identified a cadre of bright young administrators to execute the strategy.

They sought to make TPS more open and inclusive of the community it serves. TPS retains remnants of the fortress mentality of previous administrations -- the district initially refused last week to reveal Scott High School's enrollment to a Blade colleague -- but the walls aren't quite as forbidding as they were.

The board president and superintendent presided over a series of fiscal setbacks: failed millage votes in 2010, big cuts in state and federal aid, a recession-ravaged local tax base, large-scale defections of students to charter and private schools. Yet they kept the TPS budget balanced, precariously, by overcoming traditional hostilities and getting concessions from the district's employee unions.

But in the absence of new money, they also made major reductions in district services and programs: school sports, bus transportation, crossing guards, arts instruction. Toledo voters will get to pass judgment on the district's recent performance when they vote this year on a TPS request for a property tax increase. Mr. Vasquez is reluctant to put a number on the size of the tax hike TPS will seek, but says it likely will be substantial.

"We need to put a package together that tells people what they're paying for," Mr. Vasquez says. "Then they need to tell us what they want the district to look like. It's a risk, but I hope we've built a foundation of trust so that they will support the levy -- support education."

As board president, Mr. Vasquez was less interested than some of his colleagues in placating the school district's interest groups, especially its unions, or pursuing personal aggrandizement. Although he has talked of running for Toledo City Council, he has not used his current position as a stepping stone to the next political office as overtly as other school board members have.

"I always approached the [president's] job as an administrator, not an elected official," he says. But he also insists that the school board's role is to set policy for the administration to carry out, not to micromanage district operations.

TPS has forged productive partnerships in recent years with such institutions as the United Way of Greater Toledo, the University of Toledo, Owens Community College, and the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce. These initiatives are based on the notion that schools do not exist in isolation, but are affected by -- and can greatly affect, for the better -- the neighborhoods that surround them.

It's a departure from the district's previous insular culture, which treated "outsiders," even parents, with suspicion. Mr. Vasquez says he wants to do more to recruit prominent TPS alumni to promote the district, and to include neighborhoods in discussions of what to do with the sites of demolished schools.

He disdains the objections of some TPS officials who see the partnership model as a surrender of the district's authority. "The community feels more involved in decision-making than it ever has," he says. "But I don't see where we're giving up control to anybody."

Mr. Vasquez concedes his dissatisfaction with the pace of academic improvement in TPS, especially in the schools that serve the district's most disadvantaged children. He notes that district schools with large numbers of low-income students are getting an additional $30 million in federal enrichment aid, and wants to see a bigger return on that investment. "The math just isn't working for me," he says.

But he also notes that three out of four TPS students are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches -- a measure of low family income. Given the problems related to poverty, he says, the school system can do only so much.

"I don't know the answer," he says. "The [district's] intention is there, the effort, but the results aren't. Parents have to support students, but a lot of families are just trying to survive. If it was an easy problem to solve, it would have been solved before I got here. But I'm not going to give up."

Although he no longer has the bully pulpit of the school board presidency, Mr. Vasquez says Toledoans still can expect to hear from him.

"I feel a sense of freedom to say what I want to say," he says. "Public education is under attack, not just in Toledo, but in the United States. I will be as fierce an advocate for public education as you will see."

David Kushma is editor of The Blade.

Contact him at: dkushma@theblade.com

First Published January 15, 2012, 5:00 a.m.