Casting a New Mold for Superintendent

The most underrepresented constituency in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Latino parents, whose children make up 68% of the school system, stand to gain the most from the true opening of the process to choose a new superintendent. Ironically, the Latino activists clamoring for the appointment of Ruben Zacarias have been the most opposed to even the token democratization of the selection.

At play is the same old Latino political dilemma: A handful of activists assumes the right to speak for an enormous but historically far too silent Latino constituency. These actions betray a deeper chasm between the school district’s entrenched interest groups and the people whose families are directly affected by the schools.

Of course, in an institution like the LAUSD, which has an annual budget of $4.9 billion, politics is an inevitable fact of life. Indeed, many schoolteachers will tell you that children often take a back seat to politics on “the Hill” or “450,” the shorthand used to refer to the district’s downtown headquarters at 450 N. Grand Ave.

Many observers view last week’s “opening up” of the selection process as little more than a public relations stunt. Because Zacarias reportedly already had the four school board votes he needs to become the next superintendent, the odds on banker William E.B. Siart and the impressive New York educator Daniel Domenech were slim even before they got to the final stretch. Hence the unprecedented procedure of having the three remaining applicants run through a short but intense political gauntlet most likely will add up to little more than another opportunity for the district’s long-standing players to make demands on each candidate.

The political vacuum that always has allowed ethnic political activists to get away with speaking for entire populations is the same void that allows the school district to continue to conduct business as usual. Perhaps what the district suffers from most is the lack of an intense parental involvement that could keep administrators, union officials and other interest group representatives constantly reminded of the school system’s true priorities.

The turnout at this month’s municipal election may in the end prove more important to the future well-being of our schools than the selection of the new superintendent. Latino voters participated in greater numbers than ever before, and voted by a greater margin (82%) for Proposition BB, the school bond measure, than any other ethnic group. This is not only a sign of an increase in Latino civic participation, but also an indication of the direction this burgeoning electorate will take a society badly in need of leadership. Who better to make sure that the schools are well run than the parents of two-thirds of the student body?

In the next few years, hundreds of thousands more immigrant parents will become citizens and be poised to participate in our civic life. As the likely next superintendent, Zacarias would be in a position to encourage them to take a greater part in both their local schools and the district’s decision-making process.

Having been a teacher and then a principal at Breed Street Elementary School in Boyle Heights long before he became regional superintendent of East L.A. and ultimately deputy superintendent, Zacarias could fundamentally alter both the school district’s approach to its majority Latino constituency and the Latino public’s attitude toward the schools.

Latino parents no doubt will be encouraged that a bilingual administrator born and raised in East Los Angeles, who obviously cares for the well-being of Latino children, will be at the helm of the country’s second-largest school district. But merely assuming that a Latino superintendent automatically will do right by Latino children or make the interests of Latino parents a priority is like expecting a president of Mexico to do right by the people of Mexico simply because he is Mexican.

A superintendent who truly wants to bring the district’s Latino parents into the process will have to have the strength and independence to occasionally overrule the demands of the unions, ethnic education commissions and politicians that helped put him in office.

Zacarias once told me that he thought bilingual education was a bone thrown at Latinos. He lamented the fact that the politically charged program had come to represent the entirety of Latino educational issues. He knows well that better education requires a great deal more than politics, panaceas or powerful ethnic symbolism.

The district’s Latino majority can expect both good intentions and a receptive ear from Zacarias. But because of the reality of politics in an institution as large and entrenched as the LAUSD, parents can’t simply sit back and expect their children to be adequately educated. They must take the concern for the schools they have begun to show at the ballot box and continue to assert their presence in the one institution that always has played a key role in boosting immigrants up the socioeconomic ladder: our schools.