Turmoil at the Top

The vast majority of Los Angeles families don’t care who the superintendent of schools is. They want a good education for their children, but the renewed controversy over how long Supt. Ruben Zacarias will keep his job is siphoning energy from improvement in the schools.

The recently elected reform majority on the Los Angeles school board came to office early last month promising to concentrate on student achievement. Board members got the disastrous mess at Belmont high school off their plate by appointing a special commission to quickly decide whether the contaminated site can safely be a school campus. They should be turning to their larger agenda. However, all attention seems focused on whether Zacarias will keep his job in the wake of reports that Mayor Richard Riordan has sought outside advice about Zacarias’ replacement and that some board members would like him to leave the post sooner rather than later. Zacarias, 70, suggested he would try to stay for five years. His current contract, already extended a year through maneuvering by the outgoing board, runs until 2001. The superintendent, now apparently in full battle mode, has put forth a barely veiled threat that he might take the job dispute directly to the district’s large Latino population.

And who are the victims? The students, as usual.

Gohar Galyan, a junior at Marshall High School, wrote movingly in The Times and LA Youth newspaper last December about her school’s ancient textbooks, filthy, unrepaired restrooms, bitter teachers, shrugging administrators. Teachers and principals blamed downtown administrators, who blamed teachers and students. This is the dead-at-the-core, finger-pointing culture that is killing the school district and that Zacarias promised to change almost 26 months ago when he took the job.

Whether Zacarias has made substantial progress is open to question. The new school board says it will hold him to higher expectations than the old board--as it should--but its evaluation should be done without the current political clamor. Riordan deserved plaudits for helping elect a reform majority on the board; now he has to trust the new board and let it work. His reported meetings to discuss the district’s leadership post-Zacarias, no matter his positive focus on results, were politically clumsy. The in-your-face maneuvering has needlessly put Zacarias on the defensive and added fuel to his supporters’ charges of back-room meddling by a downtown business oligarchy.

It is the school board’s criteria that Zacarias must meet, both for quality of instruction and management of the behemoth, 660-school district. Districtwide test scores have improved slightly since 1997, but some of the biggest instructional changes, including smaller primary classes and renewed emphasis on phonics, were the result of state initiatives. Reading scores remain in the bottom third nationally. Incompetent teachers still teach and bad principals are still in charge at too many schools. A few truly ruinous principals have been encouraged to retire or have moved into administrative jobs downtown, which seems more reward than punishment.

The board will also hold Zacarias responsible for the district’s nearly $7.5-billion annual budget. There has been precious little oversight in the past, but auditor Don Mullinax, brought in by the board this year after a scathing report by an outside auditing firm, has been tightening procedures and issuing alarms about the problems created by lax controls.

Zacarias is due for his first formal evaluation by the new board in January. By then, the board will have a firm grip on whether Zacarias, who has spent a 33-year career working his way up within the Los Angeles Unified School District, can ever accomplish the shake-it-up systemwide reforms that the district so desperately needs.

Here’s what must happen next: Zacarias, who truly cares about the children of Los Angeles Unified, must put his mind back on them and make the tough administrative decisions that will benefit them and move the district forward. He should promise, without threats on the side, to abide by the judgment of the board majority. And while Riordan’s pursuit of better management and accountability is key to better public education, the mayor must avoid actions that make him look like a puppeteer controlling the board. There is absolutely a need for advocacy from outside the district, but it has to be seen as fair. The board can help by formulating, as quickly as possible, its high expectations for the superintendent. And Zacarias’ supporters can refrain from insisting that Zacarias, and he alone, must be superintendent of Los Angeles schools. Ultimately the judgment must be about performance, not personalities.