Longtime school business official Stan Mantooth takes over as Ventura County superintendent of schools this week, bringing with him three decades of experience in public education.

Mantooth, 57, of Camarillo, replaces Charles Weis, who left in June to take the Santa Clara County superintendent position.

The former associate superintendent and chief business officer for the Ventura County Office of Education officially moved into his new post Monday. He will serve until Weis' term ends in 2010 and an election is held. Then, he expects to run for the seat.

"I have always had a passion for this industry, for education," Mantooth said Friday. "You can't ensure success unless you're making investments in the future, and it's all about kids."

He wants to be a more visible advocate for children, and said in the new position, "I'm able to step out there, be a little bit more vocal to keep spreading the message about making that investment."

The Ventura County Board of Education appointed Mantooth in August, saying the biggest problem facing education will be financial. The board set his annual salary at $185,000.

Mantooth said he plans to be a strong advocate for preschool programs, like his predecessor, saying "what you invested on the front end, you don't have to pay for on the back end."

In the next few weeks, he will start visiting county schools, then he plans to visit two or three schools in every local school district — an effort he hopes to repeat each year.

Trudy Tuttle Arriaga, superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District, said she sees the county superintendent as someone who helps lead local district administrators and advocates for the county.

That includes keeping local schools and districts updated on what's going on at the district and state level, she said, and overseeing the county office, which provides professional development training, business services, special education instruction and other programs for local districts.

"I think Stan has a working knowledge of not only the county schools office but districts throughout the county," Arriaga said, and "he's well-respected by his colleagues."

After high school, Mantooth, who grew up in the Los Angeles area, went to CSU Northridge, where he majored in geography while working as a custodian in the Las Virgenes Unified School District.

"I wanted to be a meteorologist," Mantooth said. But when he graduated with a bachelor's degree, there weren't a lot of job openings.

"One was in the country of Colombia and the other was in Alaska."

It wasn't in the cards to relocate to either place, so Mantooth decided to stay at the school district and see where it would lead. "That kind of was the start of my climb," he said.

Las Virgenes Superintendent Don Zimring met Mantooth when he was a custodian. Zimring, an administrator at the time, said Mantooth always made it clear that he was going to further his education.

"One of the first things I noticed ... he was one of the best-read men I had ever seen," Zimring said. "He could talk to you about anything."

Mantooth was 3 when his mother taught him to read, he said. He remembers reading billboards as they drove in the car, and it just stuck.

"I read everything, from the back of the cereal box to government reports to science-fiction novels," Mantooth said.

He moved up through classified positions, becoming plant manager and maintenance director in Las Virgenes. Later, with a master's degree in school business administration from Pepperdine University, he became the chief business official for the Oak Park Unified School District, then moved to the county Office of Education in 1996.

Zimring described Mantooth as calm and purposeful. "He had a great way with people," he said. "He could listen to everybody and come up with a good answer."

Denise Danne, the county office's human resources director, has worked for Mantooth for about 11 years.

The first time she met him, she said, he was a custodian who cleaned her classroom at Calabasas High School.

Now, she said, he's a great boss. He's "down to earth," and there's no pretense, she said.

Mantooth doesn't have as much experience on the instruction side of K-12 education, but Danne said she doesn't think that will be an issue.

He is knowledgeable about curriculum and other non-finance areas, she said, and he's always asking questions and wanting to learn more.

"He also has an amazing group of people here," Danne said, including Associate Superintendents Cary Dritz and Sandra Shackelford, who oversee student services and instruction, respectively.

Mantooth also found a spot in front of the classroom recently, teaching in the graduate program at CSU Northridge for three years. "What I find so rewarding about it is I'm teaching teachers," he said. That made it a little intimidating at first, he said, but "after I got over the initial jitters, I found I really took to it."

Mantooth said he's made an effort to stay connected to the classroom.

"If you don't have an affinity for what's going on in the front line," he said, "how can you best support it?"