Riordan in Discussions About Next Schools Chief

Even though Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias has two years left on his contract, Mayor Richard Riordan has begun hosting City Hall discussions with business leaders and outside educators about what qualities to look for in a new superintendent.

Zacarias, who has been in the job only 17 months, has not been a part of those discussions. And with Board of Education members privately vowing to remove him, his days in Los Angeles Unified are widely considered to be numbered.

Although the mayor and board President Genethia Hayes publicly denied that they are seeking Zacarias’ ouster, other insiders acknowledge a lack of confidence in the superintendent, with some saying he has to go.

Some sources said that his removal alone would not be sufficient and that the district needs to clean house by demoting or firing 200 administrators.

The consensus among business leaders and some school officials is that Zacarias will resign within months. According to one participant in the ongoing talks, the conversations about who would be a good successor are “a signal that everyone has decided that Ruben is going, and sooner rather than later.”

In an interview Friday, Zacarias said he does not intend to leave the $188,000-a-year job unless forced out for “valid reasons” by a majority of the seven-member Los Angeles Board of Education.

The 70-year-old district veteran, who said he believes there is a plot to remove him, noted that criticism “comes with the territory” and said he intends to complete the reform efforts he has initiated over the past year and a half.

As for talk that he might be amenable to a buyout of his contract, he said: “I’m not for sale. I’ll never turn my back on the thousands of people who depend on me for the education of their children.”

Zacarias, who regards himself as something of an icon in the city’s minority communities, also suggested that any effort to oust him would be widely unpopular.

“There are some who would see that as about control--not just of the district but the entire city,” he said. “But I would hope that the people who are so desperate to get me out understand that there would be a lot of unhappy people if that came to pass.”

Meetings Are Not Job Interviews, Mayor Says

The specter of a group of downtown business leaders planning to remove a high-profile Latino public official is so politically volatile that almost no one would discuss it for publication.

Riordan and his aides stressed that the meetings--about leadership in urban school districts--are not job interviews.

“I have not talked to anybody about becoming Los Angeles superintendent,” said Riordan, who has long expressed concerns about the quality of education in the city.

But Deputy Mayor Noelia Rodriguez said Riordan “would be negligent if he wasn’t looking at Los Angeles through the prism of a long-term approach.” The discussions, which might seem unorthodox given that the mayor has no authority over the schools, reflect concerns that Riordan has voiced since before he was elected. He has coveted the power over schools wielded by his peers in Chicago, New York and Cleveland.

He has led calls for school reform, severely chastising former board members and engaging in extensive, detailed discussions about reading instruction. Last spring, he and other business leaders bankrolled three candidates--including Hayes--and an incumbent to form a reformist majority to get the system moving.

Now he is looking ahead. Talks involving, among others, financial services executive Eli Broad and UCLA business professor William Ouchi, have focused on ways to make district management more effective.

Other participants have included superintendents who have not risen through the ranks of school administration, such as Alan Bersin, the former U.S. attorney who now heads the San Diego Unified School District, and Paul Vallas, a non-educator who was selected by the mayor of Chicago to run the schools there.

Riordan said such meetings are aimed at “just brain-picking best practices” in an effort to improve the success rate of the Los Angeles district.

Whatever the intent of the discussions in the mayor’s office, they are being characterized as part of a high-level parlor game aimed at laying the groundwork for Zacarias’ departure.

Talk about Zacarias, his future and what constitutes good leadership may just be the natural result of frustration over a school district that is large, unwieldy and, some contend, poorly managed. But questions have become more pointed since the new board majority took office in June.

“It’s the talk of the town,” said David Tokofsky, the only incumbent in the reformist majority, who was elected to a second term this spring. “Unfortunately, the talk is not about the process, it’s about who takes over.”

Despite the predictions of Zacarias’ imminent departure, Tokofsky contended that the school board is, in fact, preparing to evaluate the superintendent fairly.

Some Say Removal Would Be Unwise

Some powerful figures involved in reforming the city’s schools say getting rid of Zacarias would be neither wise nor easy and could result in a damaging battle between the Latino community and its political leaders on one side and Riordan and his allies on the other.

“Those people who are elitist and think they can go behind closed doors and make decisions about what will happen are naive and living in the 1950s,” said Virgil Roberts, an attorney who chairs one of several school reform organizations in the city. “Those days are gone.

“It is easier for a small group of wealthy people with a few billion dollars to . . . decide who will lead the United States than to get rid of a school superintendent,” he said. “Superintendents have contracts and thousands of people with a personal vested interest in them.”

The issue of who will lead the district surfaced in June when the outgoing board members provided three of five votes to grant Zacarias a year’s extension on his contract, pushing its expiration from July 2000 to July 2001. Incoming board members and Riordan were outraged at the actions of the lame-duck members.

But Latino leaders led by state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles) mobilized on Zacarias’ behalf, forcing the new board to cool its rhetoric.

Polanco could not be reached for comment Friday. Board member Victoria Castro, a staunch Zacarias backer, declined to comment.

The superintendent may have unwittingly touched off the furor about his future. He said in June that he would step aside if, by January, the “district’s educational agenda has become secondary to political agendas.”

On Friday, Zacarias said he has proved his value, meeting 21 goals he set for himself when he took the job. The board is scheduled to evaluate his performance within six months.

“It’ll take four votes to get rid of me,” he said. “But if the board takes that path, they better have a pretty valid reason for it or the public will see it as a political ploy.”

In an interview, new board President Hayes, who received significant campaign contributions from Riordan, said she has not been contacted by any business or civic leaders regarding Zacarias’ future.

“No one called me and said, ‘We’re supporting you because we know you’ll be with us on dumping the superintendent when the time comes,’ ” she said.

“But this is not about dumping somebody because everyone thinks he’s got to go,” she said. “It’s about holding him to a standard--what are the results of his leadership as they relate to the education of 700,000 students and spending tax dollars in the most efficient way.”

However, several sources said that at least three board members are determined to find enough fault with Zacarias to oust him.

Among the scenarios under discussion that could lead to Zacarias’ departure is one in which board members would go out of their way to make his job impossible, burying him in directives. Hayes denied any such plot.

“There is an objective way of evaluating the superintendent,” she said. “If we stick to the dispassionate way of managing by results, all this other stuff becomes a nonissue.”

Zacarias said that despite the persistent talk about removing him, he remains focused on his top goal of improving student achievement.

“I’m not going to lose any sleep over this,” he said. “I’m secure in the initiatives we’re committed to in reform and in the gains we’re making. I’ll leave it up to the board to decide.”