The Schools’ Huge Task

For the fourth time in a decade, which is unfortunately no record for a major urban school district, the Los Angeles school board is searching for the right person for an almost impossibly tough job.

This search for a new superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District is complicated by a shortage of proven leaders who can survive the high expectations and hardball politics that have reduced the average tenure of a big-city schools chief to three years. Competing vacancies in New York, San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Pittsburgh and San Antonio also raise the stakes.

Outgoing Supt. Ruben Zacarias took the job in July of 1997 and will leave at the end of this week, bought out by a reform-minded school board frustrated with the slow pace of change and the district’s out-of-control finances. An insider like Zacarias is not expected to stand a chance this time, with a school board majority intent on swift and major change. The gap is being bridged by interim schools chief Ramon Cortines.

Because demand far outstrips the supply of successful superintendents, some districts pair proven leaders from outside the educational fold, such as the former federal prosecutor who heads the San Diego schools, with experienced educators who focus on improving instruction and raising test scores. In New Orleans, a retired Marine colonel runs the public schools, just as former generals have headed school systems in Washington, D.C., and Seattle. A tough, no-nonsense leader needs the full backing of an equally tough school board, or, as in the case of Washington, no school board to get in the way.

In Los Angeles, the new school board majority, led by Genethia Hayes, is fighting to take back the schools from adult agendas and refocus the district on student learning. This really is the LAUSD’s last gasp before the secessionist movement gathers critical momentum in the San Fernando Valley, in South-Central Los Angeles, in South Bay and other areas where dissatisfied parents believe that only breakup will lead to better schools.

Just as the frustrated school board reformers stood up to the cautious Zacarias, they must now stand up to union leaders, whose demands for job protection and across-the-board salary hikes defy the whole concept of accountability. Yes, the teachers might strike. Let them, because the many, many good teachers who want to see merit rewarded will not stand fast for long to protect mediocrity.

Teachers who cannot teach must be offered help and, if that doesn’t work, shown the door. The same for principals who cannot lead. This will require a united front from the board and Cortines, who has stated flatly that he doesn’t want the permanent job. Cortines advocates a district reorganization, based on a plan by Zacarias, that would return authority to principals and decision-making to campuses, at the same time downsizing the redundant central bureaucracy. He needs to follow through quickly and tenaciously with pragmatic details to overcome a culture that resists change.

The new superintendent of the Los Angeles public schools will run the nation’s second-largest district, with a $7-billion budget and an enrollment of more than 700,000 students. The district will have to conduct a thorough search and make an offer that beats out other cities; the board will have to persuade the best candidate that the board majority and the superintendent can be a united, effective, revolutionary force to lift Los Angeles schools.