Board Backs Plan for Forums in Selection of Superintendent

Under pressure to give the public more access to finalists for the job of Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, the school board tentatively agreed Monday to hold town hall forums in addition to invitation-only events.

After the 7-0 vote to further open up the process, a jubilant board President Jeff Horton predicted it would become a blueprint for other major local government appointments if it is formally approved next Monday.

“The city will see what we’ve done as they’re moving to select a police chief,” he said. “They’ll learn from us.”

But the 2 1/2-hour hearing that preceded the vote was dominated by friction between a coalition of school reformers who pushed for the open forums and Latino activists who said they see any expansion of the public process as an attack on their candidate, Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias.

“There’s a lot of suspicion out there in the community that there’s one set of rules for Latinos and one set of rules for everyone else,” said Alan Clayton, a member of Latinos for Excellence in Education. The group opposed the national search that is scheduled to conclude April 10 with the selection of three to five finalists for the job that Supt. Sid Thompson will leave June 30.

A board-appointed superintendent selection committee had recommended that the promised public review focus on a series of question-and-answer sessions between the finalists and representatives of selected groups, ranging from the teachers union to the PTA.

During the last month, however, a coalition including the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now--architects of the district’s decentralization plan--has been garnering community support for larger campaign-style candidate forums around the district. Similar approaches have become the vogue in many urban school superintendent searches.

“This selection is going to be one of the most important this city has ever seen . . . [and] we want people to see it that way,” said coalition member Joe Hicks, executive director of Los Angeles MultiCultural Collaborative.

As six members of the coalition lined up to speak to the board, some audience members complained, shouting out: “No Latinos. No Latinos.” However, the members were later joined at the podium by Rosalinda Lugo of the United Neighborhoods Organization.

Heated debate about the plan spilled out into the hallway at district headquarters, where Clayton and LEARN President Mike Roos argued after the board vote. Clayton accused Roos of trying to manipulate the process in its final stages, and Roos accused Clayton of being closed-minded to any candidates except Zacarias.

“You don’t trust Democracy,” Roos said.

“I don’t trust you,” Clayton snapped back.

Details about how and where the forums will be scheduled were left to a special school board subcommittee, created Monday after it became clear that the board could not come to an agreement. Those recommendations are to come to the board next Monday for a final vote so that top candidates can be informed of the level of exposure ahead before they agree to be among the finalists.

Potential candidates “may or may not choose to go through this process,” taking themselves out of the running, said Roy Anderson, a member of the superintendent selection committee.

Such open forums sometimes have proved grueling for candidates in other cities, raising concerns in the educational community about scaring away good prospects.

Board member Barbara Boudreaux has said repeatedly that superintendent finalists should not be treated like political candidates. On Monday, she said she agreed to the tentative plan because she believed it included only the smaller, invitation-only events.

Contacted later, board President Horton said Boudreaux had misunderstood.

Hints of Boudreaux’s long-held aversion to LEARN also seeped out several times during the board meeting. At one point, she angrily denounced the group for using the political lobbying technique last week of connecting parents with board members’ offices through electronic telephone banks.

“It jammed our phone lines,” she said, then added sarcastically, “maybe we should just put the superintendent on the ballot and vote . . . because that’s what is happening right now.”