School District, Get the Word

For the Los Angeles Unified School District, which evidently lacks full understanding of the meaning of the word, we return to a tried and true classroom exercise, writing out the definition, courtesy of Webster’s:

Responsible: 1. Expected or obliged to account (for something, to someone); answerable; accountable 2. involving accountability, obligation, or duties [a responsible position] 3. that can be charged with being the cause, agent or source of something [the moisture that is responsible for the rust] 4. able to distinguish between right and wrong and able to act rationally, and hence accountable for one’s behavior 5. a) readily assuming obligations, duties, etc.; dependable, reliable b) able to pay debts or meet business obligations.

Reacting to the devastating conclusions of last week’s 200-page audit of what went wrong with the Belmont Learning Complex, the scandal that might lead to the expenditure of $200 million in taxpayer funds without producing a habitable high school, the Los Angeles school board and Supt. Ruben Zacarias were good at parsing out legal responsibility. The board is suing O’Melveny and Myers, the law firm that allegedly gave it bad advice in negotiating the real estate deal. Yet even though the district’s top investigator called for a sweeping housecleaning of the senior staff, Zacarias won’t be the one to do it. The reason given: Since Zacarias himself was criticized in the report for his “failure to supervise the Belmont project in a diligent, professional and effective manner,” it’s a legal conflict for him to impose discipline on underlings whom the audit recommended be disciplined or fired.

In focusing so far on the legal responsibilities--admittedly a real problem considering that most district employees have a variety of job protections and all have due process rights--Zacarias fails to grasp the importance of his leadership responsibility. He did terrible damage, perhaps irreparable damage, to his mantle as a leader when he ran from responsibility last week. When Belmont began, he argued, he was an assistant superintendent and was kept out of the information loop. He wasn’t in the top job when a divided board gave the project final approval in April of 1997, but he took over as superintendent less than three months later. When you assume a new job, do you not familiarize yourself with your biggest, most expensive and most controversial project? Or do you wait, as Zacarias did, until a Times investigative report pointed out in February that top school officials failed to act on warnings five years ago that they bought the controversial site without adequate environmental tests? Only then did he recommend that the project be thoroughly examined. And when an audit says that you failed to supervise the project diligently, do you take responsibility for your part in the failure or do you say, in effect, “Don’t blame me, blame somebody else”? The LAUSD is, as so aptly phrased in the audit by watchdog Don Mullinax, the ultimate example of a culture that denies responsibility, deflects criticism and defends poorly planned and executed decisions. Zacarias himself was the embodiment of all that last week. He failed the test of leadership responsibility.

So now what? An outraged Los Angeles public waits to see whether the new school board can live up to its promises of reform. The board must do three large things at once: (1) improve academic performance of the district’s students, (2) rid the district of bad managers who inhibit that achievement and (3) keep the LAUSD politically viable in Sacramento, which is understandably looking askance at funding new school construction in a district that has proven itself inept in management. The latter is most easily fixed: The board should embrace a proposal by Proposition BB Oversight Committee Chairman Steve Soboroff to name lawyer Howard Miller, a former school board member (1976-79) and board president, to temporarily head the school construction program. He is knowledgeable about school facilities, would have the trust of Sacramento and is willing to take on the task. For the administrative decisions on discipline, demotions or firings that must take place, various conflicts might require the board to call upon yet another outsider to move the process along.

The LAUSD has operated for many years on the assumption that virtually no one can be fired. This is wrong. If those responsible for the Belmont scandal cannot be fired--indeed if the LAUSD cannot rid itself of weak administrators and bad teachers--then we all will have to ask ourselves why there is a school board, or why there is even a school district.

In the meantime, the board must set, within the next month or so, clear performance expectations so that Zacarias and the top management will know the lines of authority and the accountability standards that they must meet. It’s astounding that something so basic is not already in place. If the board can decisively accomplish No. 2 and No. 3, the No. 1 priority of academic achievement will come with far greater ease. Exercising leadership responsibility is hard, but in the end it pays.