Another L.A. Unified Official to Quit District

The Los Angeles schools administrator who developed plans to build the nation’s most expensive high school tendered his resignation Friday, becoming the district’s second major defector in less than a week.

Dominic Shambra, a gruff and forceful administrator who rose from being a teacher to head the Los Angeles Unified School District’s most entrepreneurial ventures, said he would become a private consultant. He is leaving because he is fed up with nit-picking school board members and intense outside criticism, culminating in an ongoing state investigation of his operation, he said.

“I think it’s about time that somebody said something,” Shambra commented in an interview. “The staff is taking a bad rap from meddling board members who are micromanaging everything we do.”

Shambra headed the Planning and Development Office from its inception more than a decade ago, when then-Supt. Bill Anton created the division outside the normal hierarchy, with Shambra reporting directly to him. For years, much of Shambra’s work was behind the scenes. He entered the spotlight two years ago as the chief champion of the expensive and controversial Belmont Learning Complex high school, now under construction just west of downtown.

His resignation from the $99,968-a-year job--officially a retirement that begins in July at the end of his accrued vacation time--follows that of the district’s business czar, Hugh Jones, who abruptly left Monday after just two months of employment.

Both men cited school board micromanaging as among their gripes. Shambra said that most of the interference came from David Tokofsky, but that Valerie Fields and board President Julie Korenstein also gave him trouble.

“Tokofsky no doubt is the major person who has just interfered with anything not only I’ve tried to do, but any staff has tried to do,” Shambra said.

But the three board members said it was unfair to characterize them as meddlers when they were simply asking important questions.

“It’s oversight, which was my theme--in case he missed it--from Day 1,” Tokofsky said. “This is something I’m doing all the time because everything comes to the board as a package--signed, sealed, delivered--and the only way you can figure out what’s going on, maybe, is to ask questions.”

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Furthermore, other critics questioned Shambra’s sincerity, pointing out that rumors that he was looking for a job in the private sector had circulated for nearly two years, including an item in a planning industry publication last year that said his retirement was imminent.

“Give me a break--he’s been planning this for some time. . . . He was looking for other pastures, greener or otherwise,” said David Koff, who as senior researcher for the hotel and restaurant workers union had hammered Shambra hard over the Belmont school’s developer, which the union was battling on other fronts.

Shambra said he plans to start his own consulting business that will offer smaller school districts expertise in development and negotiation.

He scoffed at what he called critics’ innuendoes about using his influence in the district to increase his marketability.

In a resignation letter, Shambra said he would voluntarily adhere to the state restrictions on outside consulting, prohibiting him from accepting contracts with or being employed by anyone he worked with in his school position for a year after his retirement.

The district’s conflict-of-interest provisions also would bar him from working directly with the district during the vacation time he will take before his retirement becomes official, said district general counsel Richard K. Mason.

Citing the recent deaths of his wife and brother as factors in his retirement, Shambra said he may never return to the district as a consultant. “It’s not my intent to get a job with L.A. Unified,” he said. “I may not even be working. I may go home and paint my house and play with my dog right now.”

Under Shambra’s direction the division entered a series of complicated public-private partnerships, most of which ran into significant obstacles. A private parking garage built on district property, intended as a profit-making venture, never produced anticipated revenues because of changes in downtown parking regulations. Shambra was a key player in one of the district’s grandest plans--purchasing the mid-Wilshire Ambassador Hotel for a high school site--which ended in years of litigation.

In each case, Shambra was responsible for navigating through the development waters that public school districts had rarely tested. He did that with a team of outside consultants including one, Wayne Wedin, whose contract the school board refused to renew late last year--a factor that featured in Shambra’s decision to resign.

“I think the board’s failure to renew Wayne Wedin’s contract bothered him greatly,” said one of Shambra’s confidants, who asked to remain anonymous. “I think he saw that failure to renew a key part of his team as a sign that . . . the era of creative joint partnerships is in jeopardy or over.”

Shambra’s joint partnership efforts culminated in the Belmont Learning Complex, which brought his disputes with the school board to a head. From the start, there were nagging questions about why Shambra pushed for selection of the most expensive of three developers--Kajima International--and about the overall price tag, which rose to more than $200 million including land, making the facility the most expensive high school ever built.

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The very things that made the Belmont project creative--its public housing and commercial establishments--have yet to materialize because business partners have not been found to build them.

Construction of the high school began over the summer, but not before the relentless questioning by some school board members and by the unions caught the interest of Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the state Legislative Audit Committee. For several weeks, investigators dispatched by Wildman have been combing through district documents.

Some suggested that Shambra’s departure might have been motivated by concern over what the assemblyman’s group was finding.

Shambra was incensed by Wildman’s inquiry, which he has complained about to the state attorney general, but said Friday that it was not a factor in his departure.