Filling Top Post a Thorny Task for L.A. School District

An urban school superintendent’s job is an unenviable one in the best of times. Nationally, their average tenure is shorter than a high school student’s stay.

But when Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Sid Thompson announced last week that he will retire at the end of his current contract, he threw up for grabs a post many educators view as their profession’s version of “Mission Impossible.”

“I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s going to be national interest in that job,” said Bob Peterkin, director of the Urban Superintendents Program at Harvard University. “Los Angeles is too large, there’s too much board politics and everybody in the community thinks they have an answer for that district.”

Turnover of urban school superintendents has become legendary in education circles, hovering somewhere between two and three years, according to the Council of the Great City Schools, an organization representing the largest school districts in the country.

And on top of the familiar big-city school challenges of flaccid test scores, campus violence and union skirmishes, Los Angeles faces the even more daunting hurdles of ethnic politics, a hands-on school board, an education-minded mayor and--perhaps most of all--the state Legislature’s recent passage of a law easing the process required to break up the 660-campus system.

“The big question in L.A. is whether this district superintendency is about transforming a school district or organizing a liquidation sale,” said Charles T. Kerchner, an education professor at Claremont Graduate School. “Those are really different jobs.”

Even those who view a breakup as unlikely say the transfer of authority to individual schools under LEARN--the reform and decentralization program now in 300 schools--will fundamentally change the top job, rendering the district’s central office a service provider and its superintendent the chief commissar.

The key, education experts say, is for school board members to use the luxury of the 14 months remaining on Thompson’s contract to take a long hard look inward: Do they want a shake-up or status quo? A visionary or an executor? An educator or a manager or a politician?

“The board needs to take a deep breath and figure out a solid, deliberative public process for examining the qualities that we’re looking for,” said board member Jeff Horton.

Working against such a measured approach are efforts to avert a drawn-out political battle by simply appointing Thompson’s right-hand man, Ruben Zacarias. Ethnic politics became so heated three years ago, when Thompson, an African American, and Zacarias, a Latino, were pitted against each other, that members of a Latino coalition threatened to hold children out of school if Zacarias were not chosen.

Pressure to move rapidly is coming from inside, where school board member Victoria Castro--the board’s only Latina--wants Zacarias named heir apparent on Monday--at the very meeting where the selection process is supposed to begin. So far only one board member, George Kiriyama, has said he would be ready to back such a plan.

But pressure also is mounting outside the board, where some of the same Latino activists and politicians who backed Zacarias in 1993 are demanding his appointment this time. Already, calls supporting him are pouring into some school board members’ offices.

“I don’t want to look at this as a race issue. I want to look at it as who is best for the job,” said influential Eastside City Councilman Richard Alatorre, a key political ally of Mayor Richard Riordan. Alatorre says Zacarias is the best person for the job and should be named immediately.

For his part, the mayor--who backs a district breakup and whose reelection platform includes education reform--said the district should “search the country, including people at the LAUSD,” for a candidate “who has the backbone to make decisions in a dysfunctional bureaucracy.”

Some Latino leaders say they would prefer to see a full-scale search, with a priority placed on finding a Latino. Even if Zacarias is ultimately the choice, they say, his appointment would gain credibility if it followed a thorough process.

“I think Ruben Zacarias is a very, very viable candidate,” said John Fernandez, director of the school district’s Mexican American Education Commission. “But this is only the start. I think there has to be a search.”

The urgency of naming a Latino superintendent is increasing as the Latino predominance among students grows, Fernandez and others said. Today, 67% of the district’s students are Latino, 14% are African American, 11% are white and 5% are Asian American.

In addition, the new superintendent will confront several issues of critical importance to Latinos, including renewed attacks on bilingual education and ongoing efforts to bar illegal immigrants from public education.

Zacarias, a 30-year district veteran, has worked his way up from the classroom to district headquarters, where he is now deputy superintendent. If appointed, he would be the first Los Angeles superintendent completely fluent in Spanish, and only the second Latino.

Of the many educators whose names are mentioned as possible candidates, Zacarias alone has definitively said he would like the job.

“I would continue the momentum that’s been built,” he said. “We don’t have time for quick studies.”

The district’s assistant superintendent for LEARN, Judy Ivie Burton, said she would be “honored to be considered” but had not given the idea much thought because Thompson’s resignation took her by surprise.

Several other potential candidates, such as the district’s Sacramento lobbyist, Ron Prescott--who pulled himself out of the 1993 competition--were noncommittal about their interest level. Many, such as former Assistant Superintendent Maria Casillas, who now leads a reform effort known as the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, said they were not interested in the position.

Yet questions are being raised about whether Zacarias, at 66, has the vigor for the job, and more important, whether his career-long tenure with the district has adequately prepared him for the difficult period ahead. Specifically, some school reform backers outline the relinquishment of central authority that will be called for as LEARN progresses to all the district’s schools during the next two to three years.

Likening the coming era of reform to the final phase of a pregnant woman’s labor, when the most painful contractions occur, Virgil Roberts--an attorney who serves on the boards of several education reform groups--said the new superintendent should be someone who knows Los Angeles but is not now part of the district.

“We’re talking about really doing some serious damage to the central office, and that’s really hard if . . . that’s a system you helped build,” Roberts said. “It would mean looking in the faces of people you’ve shared lunches and dinners with, people you’ve raised children with, and saying, ‘Your power’s gone. Your job is gone.’ ”

However, that logic belies Los Angeles Unified’s history, which contains only two examples of a school board venturing beyond its home-grown labor pool: once in 1948 and again nine years ago, when Leonard Britton was hired from Miami.

Britton left Los Angeles after less than three years, wounded by a bitter teachers strike and saying he was handicapped by having to depend on people who didn’t know him. His departure is fodder for those who favor hiring from within.

However, an equally persuasive lesson can be learned from his successor, Bill Anton, who had worked in the district for 40 years. Anton abruptly resigned after just 26 months on the job, citing the frustrations caused by school board members whom he said felt “micro-managing is their prime responsibility.” He was followed by Thompson, first as interim and then as permanent replacement.

Nationally, an ever-shrinking pool of candidates is applying for top school superintendent positions, which many attribute to the jobs’ increasingly political nature.

Ray Cortines, who left his post as chancellor of New York City schools in 1995 after more than a year of nearly constant attacks by the mayor, has his own opinion about what drives people out of the field. He blames waning community support for public education in urban areas.

“I’m not sure there’s a will or a desire on the larger part of the community about doing these jobs in the inner city,” he said. “Our schools’ population is getting poorer, they’re more mobile, the whole family structure is changing. . . . People look at those as problems, not issues. They want to point fingers of blame.”

Cortines, who is among those frequently mentioned as possible contenders for Los Angeles’ opening, laughed when asked if he would be interested.

“Oh, heavens no,” he said.

In Los Angeles, the school board’s junior member, David Tokofsky, said the shrinking applicant pool kindles his preference for looking outside the ranks of school administrators. Last year, he noted, Seattle’s public schools chose a retired U.S. Army major general and city manager as its superintendent.

“The thing for me is to do something bold and dramatic,” Tokofsky said. “Why limit it to educators? Why not the pool of business, the pool of military, the pool of state or national legislators? Why think small?”

Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Search for a Schools Chief

In the wake of Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Sid Thompson’s announced resignation as of June 1997, numerous names are being floated as possible replacements. Among those most frequently mentioned:

*--*

Name Age Experience Interested? THE INSIDERS *Judy Ivie Burton 48 L.A. asst. supt., LEARN Maybe *Sara A. Coughlin NA* L.A. asst. supt., student health No *Dan Isaacs 56 L.A. asst. supt., school operations No *Ron Prescott 57 L.A. assoc. supt., gov’t relations; Won’t say 31 years with district *Ruben Zacarias 66 L.A. deputy supt.; Yes 30 years with district THE OUTSIDERS *Maria Casillas 51 Director of LAAMP reform group; No previously L.A. asst. supt. *Ray Cortines 63 Former chancellor NYC schools No *Ted Kimbrough 61 Interim supt., Sacramento; Won’t say past supt. Chicago, Compton; former L.A. assoc. supt. *Paul Possemato 62 Supt., Laguna Beach Unified; Unknown former L.A. assoc. supt.

*--*

* Not available