School Board’s Twisted Priorities

At the Tuesday night meeting of the Los Angeles school board, members heard more alarming news about the Belmont Learning Complex, the high school under construction downtown: Seepage of toxic and explosive gases there can’t be fully fixed. It’s another in a series of revelations that makes the $200-million public investment in the nation’s most expensive high school a disaster of staggering proportions. But when the wrong-way board went into a closed executive session, it decided to focus on what it thought was really important: extending the contract of Supt. Ruben Zacarias through July 2001. It’s another example of why the L.A. Unified School District is so poorly run. Its leaders have a bad case of misplaced priorities.

Those who have said they support giving Zacarias an extra year (his current contract expires in July 2000) are lame ducks George Kiriyama and Barbara Boudreaux, along with board President Victoria Castro. Another defeated board member, Jeff Horton, will deserve praise if he sticks to earlier statements opposing the extension.

There’s no legitimate reason that three outgoing board members, with the help of the current board president, should make such a major management decision now, since Zacarias already has a contract that continues for another year. Three newly elected board members take office July 1. Good sense requires that the current seven-member board not tie the hands of the incoming board. Those trying to distract from the real issue--good management practice--and to cast it instead as an ethnic job protection matter do great disservice to Zacarias and the 700,000 children of the LAUSD. If Zacarias deserves a contract extension, then let the new board decide. If he does not, a precipitous decision now would mean the new board might be forced to buy out his extra year, to the tune of $188,000 in taxpayer funds. That would be shameful.

Members David Tokofsky and Valerie Fields have made their opposition to the extension clear; how can members Julie Korenstein or Castro justify any other decision?

Tokofsky rightly pointed out that a last-minute extension of the contract would gain Zacarias no favor with the new board. And the three incoming members, by the way, can’t take office soon enough to suit us.