Two candidates hope to become California's next superintendent of public instruction, a position that requires the patience to answer a frequent question from constituents: "So, what exactly do you do?"
The short answer is that the state's top education official runs California's 9,500 schools, which educate 6.3 million students.
The long answer is more complicated. The superintendent is a bureaucrat, a politician, an administrator and, in worst-case scenarios, the one who takes over bankrupt school districts.
He is a University of California regent and a California State University trustee, and he controls community college cash.
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