School Board Majority Plans to Oust Zacarias

A majority of Los Angeles school board members have decided to dismiss Supt. Ruben Zacarias, and the board will meet today to begin working out terms of a buyout package.

Board President Genethia Hayes on Wednesday posted a terse notice of a closed-session hearing to take up “consideration of the superintendent’s term of employment and a proposed retirement/severance agreement.”

The board will also discuss, and may take action on, the selection of an acting superintendent and the launching of a nationwide search for a permanent replacement.

Ramon C. Cortines, former chancellor of the New York City school system and past school superintendent in Pasadena, San Jose and San Francisco, appeared to be the leading candidate to fill the job on an interim basis, district officials said. Cortines, 67, did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview, Hayes said the ouster move was precipitated by the stalemate between the 70-year-old superintendent and the board over its appointment Oct. 12 of real estate attorney Howard Miller as chief executive supervising day-to-day operations in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“There is no getting around the fact that this is a management issue; there is a board resolution that is not being followed,” Hayes said, referring to Zacarias’ resistance to relinquishing any of his authority. “There comes a time when you have to say all of the best intentions of an attempt at mediation have to come to an end.”

Zacarias has alleged that the appointment process violated state open meeting laws. And Latino elected officials and civil rights leaders have come to view the board’s action as symbolic of its seeming disrespect for Latinos in general.

Hayes said the confusion about who is in charge and the ensuing paralysis among district managers are intolerable. School board officials said she and fellow members Valerie Fields, Caprice Young and Mike Lansing are in favor of opening buyout talks.

Such discussions would determine Zacarias’ severance package, but with four trustees backing a buyout, he would have no choice but to leave.

“Two weeks [of confusion since Miller’s appointment], in my opinion, is too long,” Hayes added. “You make a decisive action. You say clearly we have to make a dramatic reform. Get management under tight control.”

The board’s move to install Miller as CEO was precipitated by alarming environmental reports about a school construction site in South Gate. The problems, similar to those at the troubled Belmont Learning Complex near downtown, came amid board members’ increasing frustration with the pace of district reforms.

Fields said she expects Zacarias to be replaced by a candidate with no direct ties to the beleaguered district. And, she vowed, ethnicity and race will not be criteria in the selection process.

“I would prefer hiring somebody from outside the district so they can reorganize without any biases and without any family ties,” she said. “My take on that is that we must open it to all ethnicities, races, creeds, national origins. We need to get the most qualified person in America.

“I would think [that] if you do a good nationwide search, it would take nine months,” she added. “I would hope to have somebody in place by July 1.”

Negotiations May Take a Few Days

Negotiations on the buyout terms could take several days, sources said. Zacarias is likely to fight for, at a minimum, $277,000 to cover the remaining 18 months on his contract, plus $150,000 for accrued vacation time. Some board members suggested offering him a job as a consultant.

Several trustees expect Zacarias to remain in place at least until an interim superintendent steps up to the plate.

Zacarias, who Tuesday unveiled a plan to reorganize the vast school system by splitting it into 12 semiautonomous “mini-districts,” declined to comment about Wednesday’s developments. His attorney, Joseph Coyne Jr., said, “We have legal grounds to challenge these actions, and we don’t want a buyout.

“I really can’t respond until we hear what they have to say,” he added. “I’m disheartened the board hasn’t reached out for a compromise solution in the public’s best interests.”

But one elected official who has been closely involved in efforts to mediate the dispute said Zacarias has shown no willingness to forge a solution.

Hayes and Fields both said they intend for Miller to remain in his current position and to report to the new acting superintendent. They were unclear on how long Zacarias should stay in his post once a buyout package is agreed upon.

Both trustees also said that they are not considering anyone in particular for acting superintendent and that they will discuss the issue today.

The meeting was scheduled last week in response to concerns about the speed with which Miller was named CEO. Board members agreed to again propose his appointment--this time as chief operating officer--and to take public comment on the matter.

The agenda was later changed to include discussion of a buyout.

“My resolve is firm that this district must be brought into a management structure that allows us to talk about our children and their educational needs,” Hayes said. “We can’t remain frozen in time with these salvos back and forth.”

Although Cortines appeared the most likely choice for the interim job, other people being mentioned at district headquarters Wednesday included Maria Casillas, president of the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, or LAAMP, and Tony Alvarado, chancellor of instruction for the San Diego City School District.

Cortines served for about a decade as superintendent of schools in Pasadena. After leaving in 1984, he became superintendent in San Jose, taking over a district that had declared bankruptcy after signing a contract with its local teacher union that it could not afford. After winning praise for stabilizing San Jose schools, he became superintendent of San Francisco’s schools in 1986.

In 1993, Cortines joined the Clinton administration as undersecretary in the Education Department, staying there only briefly before becoming chancellor of the New York City school system later that year. In New York, he ran afoul of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and left in 1995 amid a struggle over whether the mayor or the superintendent would control the district--an issue eerily reminiscent of Zacarias’ battles with a school board majority supported by Mayor Richard Riordan.

In an interview earlier this week, before word of the board’s pending action got out, Cortines talked about what it would take to improve the quality of Los Angeles’ education system. He stressed the importance of investing in professional development for teachers and principals, of raising expectations for students and of focusing on results.

Most of all, he said, the local community must get serious about improving the schools.

“For Los Angeles to have a renaissance in education, it means people have got to stop saying, ‘Hey . . . we need to give up on Los Angeles public education,’ ” he said.

“ ‘There are good teachers, good schools and there needs to be progress. How many of those good ones do we have? How many more next year are we going to have than this year, and how many the third year?’ You’ve got to start. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s so bad, I can’t do anything.’ But you’ve got to start.”

Superintendent’s Backers Dismayed

Zacarias’ three supporters on the board, Victoria Castro, Julie Korenstein and David Tokofsky, expressed dismay at the decision to force a buyout--a move that they suggested could become politically volatile.

“This is a hostile takeover of a public institution,” Castro said. “The shareholders in this case are the parents, who did not have an opportunity to have a say in the process. But here, fairness and due process were never part of [the board majority’s] agenda.

“There were other paths they could have taken that would not have been so distasteful as this one,” she said, “such as rescinding Miller’s appointment.”

Korenstein called Hayes’ notice “a very unfortunate knee-jerk reaction.”

“It would have made more sense to have an evaluation system in place that would have indicated clearly what the superintendent did or did not do,” she said. “To just jump into the process of buying out a contract of someone before you know what that person has accomplished is amazing to me.”

In fact, the board moved in closed session Tuesday to delay a formal evaluation of Zacarias--based on a new set of standards created only two weeks ago. The delay was requested by Zacarias, board members said, who wanted more time to document his progress on each of the items on the 17-page evaluation form.

“I think the posting of this additional piece in the middle of a firestorm is reckless,” Tokofsky said of the impending buyout. “All board actions of major significance should be posted for public comment.”

Unease with the process in which Zacarias is seemingly being driven out of his post spread quickly across the community, even among people without a vested interest in the superintendent’s ouster.

Mark Slavkin, a LAAMP spokesman, on Wednesday summed up the feelings of many this way: “The board majority seems blind to the fact that it’s a public school system and belongs to the whole community.

“The anxiety I have is when people try to map out a scenario behind closed doors and then spring it on the public,” he said. “Yet it’s been a private dialogue among a handful of people from the beginning.

“My hope is that the board doesn’t just--boom--post a notice--boom--force a buyout,” he added. “They wouldn’t lose anything by taking another three days or even a week to think about how they could be more respectful of Ruben’s stature, dignity and importance to the district.”

Eastside community activist Sigifredo Lopez was more blunt.

“This board is not democratic. Their interests are Mayor Richard Riordan’s interests,” he said. “If there is going to be a buyout, then we’ll move to break up the district.”

Also Wednesday, several district officials alluded to a draft bill created by state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) that would put the district in receivership for at least two years while an audit of district management was conducted. Polanco, who has been a vocal supporter of the superintendent, could not be reached for comment. But such a bill could not be introduced until the Legislature reconvenes in January.

Polanco spokesman Bill Mabie said: “All along we’ve been advocating for a fair and open process. There should be no action in any direction until there is a formal evaluation.”

As for throwing the district into receivership, Mabie would only say, “There’s continuing concern about governance in the district.”

‘This District Is in a Shambles’

But civil rights activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson would lump Polanco and Lopez together with many black and Latino leaders who he says have been “blatantly playing the race card.”

“This district is in shambles, and it needs change now. If the superintendent is part of the problem, he has to go,” he said. “I would have been very disappointed if the board had buckled under to pressure from black and Latino activists and rescinded or even modified their position on Miller.”

Miller declined to comment.

Day Higuchi, president of the 40,000-member United Teachers-Los Angeles union, reflected the views of many who have remained on the sidelines in the standoff between Zacarias and the board.

“I’m not for or against Ruben,” he said. “But I am very concerned about grownups fighting for power while kids are going without textbooks or decent classroom space and being taught by teachers without credentials.

“They have an obligation to the students and the thousands of people who work for them to somehow bury the hatchet,” he said. “We’ve got to get past this morass. It can’t drag on and on. Kids need books and classroom space. Teachers need credentials. Schools need supplies.”

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Times education writer Richard Lee Colvin contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Ruben Zacarias’ Career

Ruben Zacarias rose through the Los Angeles Unified School District from student to teacher to superintendent.

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Compiled by Cecilia Rasmussen, Tracy Thomas and Nona Yates/Los Angeles Times. Source: Times research.