Whistling in the Cemetery

If there’s one job in the whole Western world that I wouldn’t want, it’s that of L.A.’s superintendent of schools. I’d rather be a naked nun in a biker’s hell than head up a district that in itself represents a little bit of purgatory.

I realize that with the appointment Tuesday of former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, it is not likely the school board will ask me any time soon to take over. My refusal may not be immediately necessary.

However, it is a nonacceptance intended for perpetuity in the event that our new superintendent soon becomes the old superintendent, followed by another new superintendent who will shortly thereafter become the old superintendent, and so on ad infinitum.

My answer will always be no. Non. Nyet.

I hope Romer has the stuff to endure at least for a little while. To hold this kind of job requires a combination of talents that has nothing to do with education. You step into it intending only to survive, not actually improve anything. And in order to survive one must possess the strongest attributes of both Mother Teresa and the Marquis de Sade.

This was told to me once in so many words by a superintendent of schools who had just been canned. Up until then he’d been one of those chirpy, happy-faced guys who whistled while he worked. But on his last day he admitted that the job had been hell and his cheery-boy facade was simply a way of getting through the day. It was akin, he said, to whistling in the cemetery.

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Romer will have to learn to whistle a happy tune very quickly in order to maintain his equilibrium as he strolls through his tenure toward the graveyard. Being L.A.’s school chief is a lot tougher than being governor. Not since Hannibal led his elephants over the Alps has a leader been faced with such daunting obstacles.

To begin with, there’s the district’s faltering standards of intelligence. And that’s just among the students. We do not, unfortunately, track the collective IQ of its permanent employees, but I’ve always been suspicious.

We do know, however, that among our 711,000 pupils, we have a majority who can’t read or write at grade level, which, of course, seriously impacts on their ability to communicate. For instance, to convey their dismay at life’s occasional unpleasantries, they are reduced to utilizing terms that wilt ranunculus.

That isn’t too surprising, since teachers often employ the same terms to describe wage offers, working conditions and their principals. The inability to communicate is being passed down, as it were, from teacher to teachee.

Additionally, the fiasco known as Belmont hints at a similar lack of brainpower among those who started to build a new high school on a potentially dangerous abandoned oil field. Construction was halted, and now it sits unfinished, looking a little like a Minoan tomb, waiting for someone to decide what to do with it.

Whistling won’t make it go away.

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Then there’s the question of whether we need the district at all. Serious efforts are underway to dismantle the whole thing into smaller units. I don’t mean into the 11 so-called “subdistricts” scheduled to begin business next month. That’s only an administrative doo-dah.

We’re talking here about a dismantling that would permanently bite big chunks out of what is now the nation’s second-largest school district to create a total of three districts in order to triple the number of problems extant in the one existing district.

But no matter how many districts we end up with, a bunch of students will likely have to stand and learn. Literally. A recent report indicates that even if we go to a year-round schedule and complete $2 billion in new construction, we’re still not going to have enough places for about 5,000 kids.

All those baggy-pants boys and sullen girls will have to stand in the back of the room, slouching and scowling, while they pretend to learn. But that won’t matter much anyhow, since there aren’t enough books to go around even for those who can read.

However, if stupidity, cupidity, inefficiency and insolvency aren’t enough to send you scurrying back to Denver, Governor, I say, “Welcome to L.A.” I wouldn’t want the job, and you may not want it in a month or so either, but look on the bright side:

Our last full-time superintendent, Ruben Zacarias, had to be dragged off kicking and screaming, but his pockets were stuffed with the cash from a $750,000 buyout. A man could stand to whistle in a lot of cemeteries for that.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.