Resignations and Reform

The Ruben Zacarias era is over at the Los Angeles Unified School District. The superintendent should take a proferred buyout and not prolong his paralyzing power struggle with the school board. Howard Miller, newly designated the chief operating officer, should clean house in the LAUSD, reassigning or firing personnel as necessary to prepare for the arrival of a decisive interim superintendent who can refocus the district’s attention on education.

The top contender, Ramon Cortines, cannot be formally considered until there is a vacancy. He is no stranger to turmoil, having served as superintendent in Pasadena, San Jose, San Francisco and New York. In Pasadena, he presided--and many say prevailed--over the disruptions of court-ordered busing for integration in the 1970s. Later, in San Francisco, he sacrificed administration assets to save instruction during a period of budget cuts. Critics call him hot-tempered and sometimes thin-skinned, but he has consistently championed rigorous instruction and high expectations. Cortines, who is interviewed today in Sunday Opinion, left New York after battles with Mayor Rudolph Guiliani over control of the district. That contentious history may endear Cortines to elements within the LAUSD opposed to Mayor Richard Riordan.

Both Miller and Cortines--if he comes aboard--represent short-term solutions. Both are experienced leaders who have the ability to quickly take hold of a district spinning out of control. Only if they can stabilize the LAUSD does it have a good chance of long-term survival.

The instability is marked by assertions that the fight over who runs the district is about race and ethnic loyalties, but an independent poll doesn’t bear that out. According to a poll released last week, only 40% of Latinos believed the superintendent was doing a good job. Latino parents who spoke Thursday night at the special school board meeting were divided in their opinion of Zacarias, but united in their insistence that public schools do better.

Miller, a former school board president and veteran of the vicious public battles over desegregation, is now authorized to run a district where decisions are made by committee and nobody is held accountable for failure. He outlines his expectations on the Op-Ed page of today’s Times. Any employee who prefers the old way of doing business should prepare a resume. Reform is urgent in a school district that cannot educate most students, provide enough textbooks, keep the bathrooms clean or build schools.

The Belmont Learning Complex, a $200-million metaphor for everything that is wrong in the district, looms nearly complete on a polluted old oil field just west of downtown. The school board is expected to decide next month whether to abandon the project and cut the district’s huge losses or resume construction and complete the campus no matter how much it costs and how long it takes to make it safe.

Belmont isn’t the only facilities failure. When School Board president Genethia Hayes and veteran board member Valerie Fields discovered that district plans to build a combined middle and high school on a contaminated site in South Gate were charging ahead, they, along with newcomers Caprice Young and Mike Lansing, broadened Miller’s responsibilities. While Miller deals with these disasters, he must also put the district on track to identify 100 appropriate sites for new schools in time to meet a June deadline for state school construction funds. At least $900 million in state school bond funding could otherwise be lost to other school districts.

The failure of the Los Angeles schools and the continued turmoil over Ruben Zacarias fuels increasing demands for a break-up of the district or state receivership. These drastic and premature suggestions will gain even greater currency if the reform-minded members of the board cannot put a new team at the top and force rapid and systemic change.