Latino Activists to Pursue Recall of School Official

Latino activists angry over the delay in naming a new superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District voted at a sparsely attended community meeting Thursday night to forge ahead with plans to attempt a recall of school board member David Tokofsky.

Although they realized that a board majority was unwilling to promote Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias immediately, most of the 50 people who attended the meeting at an Eastside church said they nonetheless hold Tokofsky individually responsible because he is the board member who represents the largest Latino population.

“David has to be the sacrificial lamb,” said Humberto Camacho, international representative for the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America. “If we don’t do that, no one will respect us.”

Board members have said they want to spend at least a month discussing their vision and their options for filling the job, a process that is to continue Monday afternoon at the third in a series of closed-door meetings.

Tokofsky characterizes himself as a Zacarias supporter but has said it is premature to commit to choosing the 30-year district veteran so soon after Supt. Sid Thompson gave a 14-month notice of his resignation.

Tokofsky could not be reached for comment Thursday night, but he has previously said that singling him out for recall is unfair when the entire district has a Latino student majority. He was elected to the Eastside/San Fernando Valley seat by just 76 votes last spring in a runoff against a Latina parent.

Members of the loose coalition that met Thursday took the name used in similar battles over the past decade: Latinos for Excellence in Education. In addition to launching a recall drive, they said they intend to lobby other board members by jamming their telephone lines and demanding meetings with them.

Placing a recall for the 5th District seat on the ballot would require gathering at least 17,000 valid signatures, according to Juan Jose Gutierrez, director of One Stop Immigration, who ran Thursday’s meeting. He estimated that could cost as much as $25,000.

Despite the low turnout Thursday night, Gutierrez expressed confidence that interest in the recall of Tokofsky would grow.

Noting that Zacarias had asked his supporters to be patient, Gutierrez said: “Considering that, I am surprised we had as many people as we did.”

Whether launching a recall attempt and lobbying other board members will influence the superintendent selection remains unclear.

Less aggressive tactics were unsuccessful three years ago, when Thompson--who is African American--was appointed over Zacarias. Nor did they work in 1987, when the school board hired a white male from Miami instead of promoting the Latino deputy.

But longtime coalition members believe that their efforts in 1987--which included a letter-writing campaign--helped that same Latino, Bill Anton, win the job several years later.

Coalition leaders continued their quest Thursday night to prove that Zacarias’ qualifications, not his ethnicity, make him the best candidate. But they acknowledged that the fact that he is Latino and fluent in Spanish add to his popularity in a district where two-thirds of the students are Latino.

Academics say issues of ethnicity are increasingly a focus when top education posts come open across the country, as has long been the case with other civic positions.

“It’s very common now, and you tend to see a much closer relationship between the dominant race and the ethnicity of the superintendent,” said Michael Kirst, an education professor at Stanford University. “It’s in part symbolic and in part that people feel they’ll be more sensitive to their needs.”

The one disadvantage to an emphasis on ethnicity, Kirst believes, is that it shrinks the candidate pool considerably because many of the most experienced educators--and most of the seated superintendents of large districts--are white males.

Other observers, however, say the demand will eventually drive the market. Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, sees the push for Zacarias as part of an important adjustment going on in California and elsewhere.

“Institutions are slowly but surely, if sometimes unwillingly, being brought into line with the makeup of the community that they must serve,” Gonzalez said.