Wanted: Schools’ Savior; Must Be Fast

Los Angeles needs a permanent schools chief. So does New York City, San Francisco, Oakland, Las Vegas and Detroit, to name just a few of the major American cities in search of a superintendent.

Public expectations are so high, problems so entrenched and the politics so treacherous that the average tenure for a superintendent of an urban district is 2 1/2 years. Los Angeles schools chief Ruben Zacarias, who leaves office Jan. 15, lasted just that long.

To find its third superintendent in five years, the Board of Education has promised to conduct one of the most extensive executive searches in its history. This time around, the district has instructed its headhunters to consider candidates from the military and corporate world, as well as educators.

Some of the potential candidates already being mentioned by board members include a few who have been driven out of their superintendent jobs. Most often mentioned is Rudy Crew, who was forced to step down as chancellor of the New York schools after a clash with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Another popular name is Bill Rojas, who took over the Dallas schools after being forced out in San Francisco.

“It used to be a kiss of death to get fired by a large city. Not anymore,” said Paul Houston, executive director of the American Assn. of School Administrators and a former school superintendent. “Getting canned in some of these places is almost a badge of courage and honor.

“Big cities need someone to die for their sins,” he said. “They look for a savior on a white horse who will save them from themselves. What the new superintendent gets is a call to be accountable, without the tools to get the job done. When his team starts losing, city officials say, ‘It’s time to get somebody new.’ ”

The result often means scrapping the predecessor’s initiatives and starting the reform process all over, with little academic achievement to show for it, according to Paul Hill, a research professor at the University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.

Educators in Los Angeles might also be accused of looking for a superman to lead the 711,000-student district. In interviews, they expressed a need for someone who can restore stability and public confidence to a district that suffers some of the lowest test scores in the state, and who can lead the district beyond the political and ethnic turmoil that helped bring down Zacarias.

“We need someone with two key qualities,” board member Caprice Young said. “They must be able to articulate a vision for what our kids need to succeed in the new millennium, and they need to know how to run a $7-billion organization.

“We’re not just looking for a change agent; we need someone who can sail this ship,” she added. “Many organizations seek the tried and true. But what we are facing is so new that there are few people who have succeeded there before.”

New Leader Faces ‘Gargantuan Task’

The new superintendent will have to contend with a swarm of pressing problems, including foundering test scores, overcrowded campuses, the end of social promotion, a movement to break up the sprawling district, newly arrived immigrants who perform poorly in English, a lack of available land for new schools, and dangerously polluted school sites.

Teachers union demands for a 6% increase in salary portend contentious bargaining negotiations this summer.

“The new superintendent faces a gargantuan task; I wish him or her the best of luck,” said state Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), who described the school district as “a political hornet’s nest in which many local officials feel they are getting very little in the way of quality education.”

To pave the way toward a smooth transition, Ramon C. Cortines will become Los Angeles’ interim superintendent on Jan. 16. He, along with Howard Miller, the district’s chief of operations, have embarked on a mission to resolve many of the district’s major problems by the time a permanent superintendent is selected in June.

“We’re on a very, very fast track,” said Cortines. “I would hope some of this district’s most difficult problems will be behind us by the time a new superintendent arrives.”

He intends to divide the district into eight to 10 semiautonomous “mini-districts,” shift decision-making authority from district headquarters to schools, and reassign hundreds of headquarters bureaucrats into the field to assist teachers and principals needing help.

They already have ordered that all students have textbooks and a clean, accessible bathroom by June, and scaled back a Zacarias-backed plan to end social promotion in all grades this year.

In the meantime, following a national trend, the school board has ordered its search firm--Hamilton, Rabinovitz and Aschuler--to cast its net wide for all qualified candidates with strong communication skills and leadership experience.

The firm, which in 1995 recruited Thomas Payzant to the top schools job in Boston, expects to contact 5,000 people across the country to solicit applications, and to place advertisements in general media newspapers and specialized magazines such as Education Week.

Ed Hamilton, chairman of the search firm, warned against settling on any favorite candidates before his nationwide search is completed.

“Reading the headlines wrongly suggests there are a half-dozen potential candidates who keep getting hired and fired like football coaches,” he said. “That’s not to say certain talented, experienced people won’t be considered. But I would not bet on any individual based upon how soon or late their names appear on people’s lips.”

But others say the reality is that most school boards don’t want to trust their districts to someone without experience in education. By and large, they prefer education reformers with a gift for avoiding tumult.

But finding experienced school administrators willing to take over large urban districts is becoming tougher every year, experts say.

Taxpayer revolts, ballooning student enrollments and decaying schools have helped make the post of superintendent “one of the most scary and challenging jobs in any sector on the globe,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. That organization represents the nation’s largest school districts.

“It’s an exhilarating, ‘only for the brave of heart’ kind of job, and when it’s over, the typical reaction is, ‘That was great, but I ain’t doing it again,’ ” he said. “That’s why, when it comes to traditional superintendents, the number of candidates a major city can expect is well below what it was 10 years ago.

“The candidate pool is so shallow right now that Los Angeles and New York may find themselves competing like never before,” Casserly said.

Late Sunday, the New York school board hired an interim superintendent, Citigroup executive Harold Levy.

The candidates pool was apparently reduced by one Thursday when Crew was appointed head of a new educational training center at the University of Washington.

Others who have been mentioned as potential candidates include San Diego Unified School District’s chancellor of instruction Tony Alvarado; Elk Grove Unified School District Supt. Dave Gordon; Houston Independent School District Supt. Rod Paige; Fresno Unified School District Supt. Carlos Garcia, and Maria Casillas, a former Los Angeles Unified School District regional superintendent who leads a reform effort known as the Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project.

Panel Gets Off to Rocky Start

A 14-member citizens committee, consisting of two appointees chosen by each school board member, was formed to gather community input on the qualities needed in a Los Angeles superintendent. The committee must give its recommendations to the board by Jan. 24.

The panel got off to a rocky start Wednesday night when it convened for the first time in the Roosevelt High School auditorium. The meeting, which was advertised in local Spanish- and English-language media, became a sometimes rancorous affair attended by only 25 people. Many of them were loyal to Zacarias. Some criticized the selection process.

“This is theatrics,” said Elena Arias, a local school district volunteer. “That’s why few people bothered to come out. They know the system is fixed. They know these people already know whom they want to be superintendent.”

A meeting the next night in San Fernando drew a slightly bigger audience.

Panelists blamed the low turnouts on inadequate planning and advertising, and difficulty in stirring public interest immediately after the holidays.

As the city sorts out the criteria for selecting the next superintendent, the issue of race arises.

School board President Genethia Hayes and board member Young insist that ethnicity should not play a role in the process. Others say that ethnicity is a valid and important consideration in a district that is 70% Latino.

“It seems to me that ethnicity is not irrelevant in Los Angeles--nor should it be the primary determinant,” said Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles-based fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy think tank in New York. “After all, it is a stage in the development of emerging groups that they use their ethnicity to gain access to the mainstream.”

For all the challenges facing Los Angeles Unified, the man who is poised to briefly take control of the district says it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.

When asked if he would consider staying on beyond June, Cortines laughed and said, “Heavens no!

“But if I was younger, I’d fight for this job; sure it’s tough, but I wouldn’t want a job that wasn’t tough,” said Cortines, who ran the New York City schools from 1993 to 1995. “This job is not about magic; it’s about hard work and keeping your eye on the issues involved in making our kids better students.

“The danger is that incoming superintendents promise too much, and the people who employ them are just as unrealistic in wanting a magic elixir, or someone who walks on the high rocks,” he said. “So we all have to be careful about what we promise, and what we ask for.

“But I think this is the greatest job opportunity in the country,” he added. “And I’m optimistic about the search. Is this district going to improve? Hell yes!”