The enormously congenial Mike Reynolds, assistant superintendent for business services for the School District for the past five years, will retire next month.

Mr. Reynolds underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery last summer.

He possesses twin towers of talent, one for which Irishmen are known and one that is foreign.

Mr. Reynolds’s brimming collegiality is his most obvious gift. He would make Emily Post look anti-social.

His more valuable asset is his ability to convert avalanches of numbers into immediately accessible concepts that translate meaningless data into pragmatic and often socko information.

Imagine fruitlessly turning a Rubik’s Cube printed in Russian script for an hour:

Then master interpreter Mike Reynolds comes along and identifies the resolutions within 30 seconds.

Now-departed Supt. Dave LaRose arrived here in August 2012 from Washington state. Sixty days later, he hired Mr. Reynolds.

Strolling through a cemetery, the uncommonly warm personalities of Messrs. Reynolds and LaRose would have coaxed at least 50 percent of corpses to rise from their resting places and join the educators on a walk-through.

Their friendliness could have halted smoke in mid-air.

Before landing in Culver City, Mr. Reynolds had run his own consulting business for the previous 19 years.

He also was a manager with the Jurupa Unified School District in the Riverside area for four years (2003-2007).

Was a Raise Deserved?

Mr. Reynolds does not always bring sunny news.

The School Board meets Tuesday evening at 7.

At a late, empty-house hour in the Board’s last meeting, April 25, President Kathy Paspalis suggested that raising her pay and that of her Board colleagues by 5 percent was a capital idea.

Further, why not make the hike retroactive to last January.

Enter Mr. Reynolds. He said that state law only allowed school boards to jack up their own pay once every 12 months.

The School Board’s pay increase is due July 1, the same day Mr. Reynolds’s successor is to take office.