The 59-year-old chancellor works the crowd of 5,000, gives three or four waves from the stage, then settles in for local small talk and — despite hecklers — a 30-minute stump speech.
The board members each have an office on the 11th floor, the chancellor works on the 10th and other departments -- budget, legal and recruitment, to name a few -- are scattered throughout the building.
Gove has said these chancellors, working alongside successful headteachers, will be responsible for monitoring performance and intervening in order to secure improvement in under-performing academies, taking decisions on the creation of new academies, and supporting the national schools commissioner to ensure there are sufficient sponsors to meet local needs.
Like the cut to tax credits, this bill is the chancellor's work, with his political fingerprints all over it.
Van Ton-Quinlivan, the vice chancellor for work force and economic development at the California Community Colleges System, explained to me the four basic skill sets out there today.
Simply put, Mr Brown believes, unlike Lord Lawson, that detailed microeconomic policy, calibrated by a wise chancellor, can work wonders.Lord Lawson's instinct was to cut taxes and to simplify them: he cut both income-tax rates and the number of bands, and streamlined the corporation-tax regime.
"From the standpoint of the business community, I don't think there is anybody that feels that the mayor or the chancellor's work is threatened by what amounts to very careful enforcement of standards for all employees," said Kathryn Wylde, president of the New York City Partnership, a leading business and civic group.
"It sends the public the message, 'This is what we value.' " Dr. Macchiarola, now president of St. Francis College in Brooklyn, said it would be far more important for the chancellor to work in close proximity to the mayor than for hundreds of administrators to do so.
He is doing surprisingly well for a chancellor on work experience.
