Superintendent Forums Draw Nearly 1,000

A pair of unprecedented campaign-style forums to stir interest in the selection of Los Angeles’ next public schools superintendent drew nearly a thousand parents, teachers and civic leaders to two Los Angeles high schools Saturday.

In Van Nuys in the morning and South Los Angeles in the afternoon, the three finalists for the job took turns taking a shot at questions drawn at random--questions that underlined the difficulty the winner will face in healing the ailing Los Angeles Unified School District.

How, for example, would they recruit better teachers, punish naughty students or raise stubbornly dismal student test scores? How would they cope with the district’s daunting ethnic diversity, handle school board politics or purge poor administrators?

And oh, by the way, would they return their salary at year’s end if they have not made a difference?

Two candidates--Deputy Los Angeles Supt. Ruben Zacarias and Long Island regional school Supt. Daniel Domenech--said they could not afford to return the annual salary of $166,000 or so.

Finalist William E.B. Siart, the richest of the three thanks to the multimillion-dollar severance package awarded when he left the presidency of First Interstate Bancorp last year, was not asked the question. But Siart said during a meeting with Times editors and reporters Friday that he would not take any compensation for the job, an approach used by Mayor Richard Riordan.

Saturday’s opportunity to quiz the superintendent candidates in person is unprecedented in this district, where previous superintendents have been chosen largely behind closed doors and functioned far more as bureaucrats than political leaders. Private meetings between the candidates and district constituent groups ranging from parents to employees spanned four days last week.

The third forum will be held today from 2 to 4 p.m. at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights.

The seven-member school board, which ultimately will decide who replaces retiring Supt. Sid Thompson, agreed to schedule the forums under pressure from the education reform community, which wanted to ignite a broad debate over the future of public education. Riordan pitched in with radio spots publicizing the events and showed up at Dorsey High on Saturday after turning down an invitation to the private sessions, saying he did not want to meddle.

“It’s always good for the people to get out and be forced to tell what they believe,” Riordan said.

The Dorsey High session in southwest L.A. brought the most pointed questions, both because of the differing interests of Los Angeles’ communities and the vagaries of a random drawing of questions. Among them was the common allegation that bad school administrators are bumped into poorer parts of the city.

All three candidates said it was wrong and they would not do it.

“It’s tantamount to sweeping the dirt under your carpet at your home,” Domenech said. “There’s no place in any school system for that.”

Generally though, the trio, drawn from a search pool of 50 candidates, fell back on what have become familiar platforms for those following the past week of formal and informal speeches:

* Zacarias wants to rank all schools based on test scores and target the bottom 100 for intervention by a trained team of teachers and administrators.

* Domenech wants to publish school report cards for all 661 campuses, rallying public pressure for those with poor grades to improve.

* Siart wants to use his management expertise to streamline district administration and funnel more money and resources to the schools.

In the crowd at the two campuses were leaders of all sorts--Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. presidents, teachers union officers, school board members and candidates, and even Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

Some came with their minds made up; others left not knowing whom they favored. But most thought they had learned something valuable.

Carrying her sleepy 5-year-old as she left Birmingham High School in Van Nuys after the morning session, special education teacher Jan Le Vine said she appreciated the chance to see for herself.

“I’m a little more comfortable with the two that have chalk dust on their hands,” she said, referring to educators Zacarias and Domenech, who both began their careers as teachers. “But all three of them are really, really qualified.”

At Dorsey High, Young Summers expressed frustration that her question about busing had not been pulled from the box. She lives just blocks from the school, but her son travels to a magnet middle school in the San Fernando Valley.

She had wanted to ask what the candidates could do about a predicament common among inner-city parents: She had wanted her son to attend a neighborhood school, “but all of his friends, the better students, were leaving, and he was the last one.” But that complaint aside, Summers said she was glad she had come.

Latino activists who have consistently supported Zacarias for the job unfurled a large banner outside both forums that read: “Dr. Ruben Zacarias. The most qualified L.A.U.S.D. superintendent.” Spokeswoman Gina Alonso said that all seven of the district’s ethnic commissions have thrown their support behind Zacarias, though she acknowledged that some of the commissions did not send representatives to meetings with the other two.

Politics of the campaign have been heated, marked by numerous protests at school board meetings where decisions were made to do a national search, reach out to non-educators and hold public forums with the finalists.

Parent David Lugo, who is pushing for the controversial Belmont Learning Center, a new high school proposed near downtown, traveled to Birmingham and Dorsey on Saturday and said he planned to stop at Roosevelt today.

“We’re going to support Zacarias,” Lugo said. “We don’t like these other guys. . . . [Siart] has experience only in the bank!”

In recent days, some of the Zacarias supporters’ attention has been focused on discrediting Siart, out of the feeling that he would be the least empathetic to minority children’s needs. At the Birmingham forum, fliers were passed out criticizing him for decisions by USC, where he serves as a trustee, to replace some service employees by contracting out the jobs.

A few Zacarias supporters disclosed that they were surprised by how much they liked Domenech, lauding him for his straightforwardness. Others at the forums said they thought the district needed the more radical shake-up Siart would be likely to bring.

Outside Birmingham High, a common thread of conversation was whether the district could figure out a way to hire all three of the finalists.

“What I would really like to see is the three of them . . . and get rid of the dead weight under them,” said Gloria Cliffords, a founding member of the district’s Parent Collaborative. “They make a really dynamic team.”