Now Every Machiavelli Will Get a Shot at the School District

The action taken by only four members of the Los Angeles Board of Education last Tuesday--relieving Supt. Ruben Zacarias of his CEO responsibilities and installing Howard Miller as the interim crisis manager--used the wrong process toward the right goal. Behaving in an ends-justify-the-means fashion will unleash the furies of every Machiavellian player in the entire city.

The school district is in crisis both in instruction and facilities, but behaving like generals in Pakistan teaches children and others the wrong lessons. Zacarias and Miller now must sit down and resolve their roles and responsibilities in a fashion that provides a model of behavior for adults and children alike.

Over the last 10 years, the school district has provided to the city a model of an open and (perhaps even excessively) democratic process. Whether it was the troublesome process of selecting a district superintendent or a school principal or even a teacher at a local school, the process has been inclusive.

The public, the press and the political patricians rightly insisted that this be the way, reforming the old-style, old-boys district policies of the past. Some schools have even suffered for months while a community labored through a consensus process that included all stakeholders, but this is the price we all pay for a democratic process.

The posting of the notice for last Tuesday’s action relating to the leadership of the district was done in a vague manner, against the objections of the board’s executive officer and its special legal counsel. The board was led to believe that the topic had to do with district auditor Don Mullinax’s report on the troubled Belmont Learning Complex and South Gate elementary and high school construction sites.

Rather, the meeting was about a proposal to make a radical departure from a decision made just three weeks earlier to hire the savvy Miller to help shepherd the district through the post-Belmont construction era. But because the collective commitment of four board members was obtained in advance of the meeting, reason did not prevail.

Now that the furies of ethnic politics are unleashed, it is crucial that Miller and Zacarias, along with a mutually agreed-upon mediator, arrive at a solution as to their roles, responsibilities, mission and chain of command in a way that demonstrates and models leadership.

As James Madison said, the interests of men must be made to attach to the interests of place. The process and the purpose are even more sensitive in the field of public education, because education is, as sociologist Robert Bellah says, our “civil religion.” People today are pursuing single agendas, whether based on their ethnicity or educational philosophy or faith. Compromise and reciprocity--the Madisonian middle of politics and society--is rapidly disintegrating.

If compromise, purpose and personality cannot be resolved, then the enterprise itself is at risk. Factions will cry out for the disintegration of the behemoth district. “Let a thousand Compton Unified school districts bloom!,” might as well be the battle cry.

But any glance at the test scores of small school districts in Los Angeles County reveals that the LAUSD, with its vast resources and allies, stands a better chance at reform as a whole rather than as many balkanized districts.

It must be said that there is no doubt that there is a crisis in L.A. Unified--and all of public education for that matter. Even though educrats and fellow travelers deny the low test scores and lack of school facilities have anything to do with the organizations of public education and their leadership, the empirical results and the lack of physical structures belie the truth. All major urban public school districts need help.

Yet one superintendent, or even one savior, cannot do the job alone. That will take an act of collective civic will that so far has been absent.

The system must be shaken from top to bottom. Crisis can bring change, but it does not automatically mean perestroika and glasnost. Process--and due process--matter. It is as American as the Constitution itself.

Now Zacarias and Miller can show their true worth by resolving their differences quickly so that the board and civic culture can act unanimously to fix the public institution.

Enough is enough. Let us all get down to the hard work of building schools, building character and building a city that works for all of its people--young and old, majority and minority.