Frank Fiscalini, a longtime San Jose school superintendent and civic leader whose political influence brought him to within 2,000 votes of the city mayor’s office in 1990, died Friday at 101. He passed away peacefully of natural causes, his family said.
In more than a half-century of work in and service to San Jose, Fiscalini developed the clout of a master politician. By the end of his career in local government, including two terms as city councilman during the 1990s, the city’s movers and shakers rated him among San Jose’s 40 most powerful people.
He was also widely liked and admired.
“It’s hard to think of anybody who made it through the wind tunnel of politics and made it out with such honesty and integrity,” said State Sen. Dave Cortese, a former vice mayor of San Jose, who counted Fiscalini as a mentor and friend.
In this 1996 photo, Frank Fiscalini responds to a question at a San Jose candidate forum in Willow Glen. (Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group archives)
Fiscalini was superintendent of the East Side Union High School District for nearly 25 years, leading the district’s expansion to some 20,000 students. He was also chief executive officer of Alexian Brothers Hospital for almost 10 years and raised thousands of dollars for charitable causes, with an ear tuned to the monied and religious constituencies of the Santa Clara Valley.
He was president of the board that helped launch the Children’s Discovery Museum, and he led the effort to renovate and transform St. Joseph Church into a cathedral. As a councilman, he was instrumental in moving City Hall downtown and redeveloping the California Theatre.
“San Jose would not be the city it is today without Frank Fiscalini,” said Joe Guerra, his chief of staff on the council.
Fiscalini didn’t just push for the big projects. To fix the aging roads in his Willow Glen district, Guerra recalled how Fiscalini took fellow councilmembers to lunch in the neighborhood, driving over the bumps and potholes to show them firsthand the needed repairs.
“When it got down to constituents and taking care of people’s streets, he was just as tenacious at getting it done,” Guerra said.
While some opponents said Fiscalini achieved his popularity as a purveyor of patronage through his superintendency, he always maintained that he benefited merely from the power of volunteerism on scores of boards and commissions.
Joshua DeVincenzi Melander, president of the Little Italy business district downtown, remembered Fiscalini, a second-generation Italian immigrant deeply involved with the community, for his “professionalism and gentle spirit.”
“The Italian community and City of San Jose lost one of our great residents,” Melander said in an email.
Fiscalini was born in San Bernardino in 1922, the fifth of seven children, and grew up in the Southern California city, where his father was a railroad carpenter and his mother struggled to keep a mom-and-pop grocery open during the Great Depression.
As a young man, he got his start playing catcher for a New York Yankees’ Class A farm club. He won a baseball scholarship to Santa Clara University and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1948, followed by a master’s from Stanford, and began thinking about a career in law.
A chance to teach and coach at Bellarmine College Preparatory changed his mind, and in 1950 he joined the faculty at James Lick, the first high school in the East Side Union High School District. In six years, he rose from teacher to assistant principal, then principal and finally superintendent of the new district at 33.
He used the next two decades to help build 11 high schools, including Independence, which incorporated four schools of roughly 1,000 students into one campus.
His daughter Jill Peters described him as an unwavering advocate for the predominantly Latino students and the faculty in the district, fostering relationships that had a lasting impact.
“Somebody would always come up to him and say, ‘I was one of your students — you were the only one who believed in me and changed my life for the good,’” Peters said.
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Fiscalini moved to Alexian in 1981 and then sought the mayor’s job nine years later, losing to Susan Hammer by only 1,819 votes out of 167,317 cast. The margin was 0.4%.
He won election to the City Council to represent District 6 in 1992 and was reelected four years later, serving until 2000. He remained closely connected to local politics and civic issues, advising the city’s politicos and serving as a founding board member of Opera San Jose well into his 90s.
His ultimate goal, Peters said, was to leave the city better than he found it.
“His heart and soul are in a lot of places in San Jose,” she said, “and in a lot of people in San Jose.”
Fiscalini, whom Peters described as the “proverbial family man,” is survived by his four children, Lisa Hausle, Gregg Fiscalini, Lori Sweat, and Jill Peters, as well as 13 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
The family is planning a private memorial service and considering a separate public ceremony.
