Tough Style of Cortines, Miller Offends Many

In their relentless push for change, the two main architects of Los Angeles school reform have antagonized many powerful interests, including unions, key Latino leaders, local officeholders and influential businesspeople.

As a result, interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and chief of operations Howard Miller enter 90 critical days of their reform agenda in the fragile position of having more potential adversaries than allies.

In effect, they have bypassed the conventional way of accomplishing big political tasks in Los Angeles, which is to build coalitions among the region’s dispersed political leadership.

Rather, they are betting everything on two aces: the unyielding resolve of a Board of Education majority to overhaul the district and the presumed groundswell of public support for change.

“Our greatest ally is everyone’s understanding of the depth of the failure in the way the district has been run,” Miller said.

Their bold ambitions and brazen tactics are raising some alarms but also eliciting grudging admiration among a wide range of activists and observers who are united by their desire to see improvement in the educational system. Some are concerned that they are not building the base of support needed to nurture the reforms after they leave.

“I’m so ambivalent about everything,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “On one hand, I want them to be successful for the sake of the kids. On the other, it seems wrong that two guys who weren’t even part of the organization last year can come in and reform it in terms of their vision and not in the vision of anyone internally.”

But Guerra, like many others, has little doubt they will prevail in their plan to dramatically reduce the district’s central office and introduce unpopular labor practices such as merit pay for teachers.

“The opposition to what Cortines and Miller are doing is so weakened and so back on its heels, they won’t have a coherent response,” Guerra said. “They’ve been de-legitimized as having produced the problem.”

A majority of board members have already said they will vote for the reorganization plan. The plan would reduce the central office by about 800 positions, with most of them being transferred to 11 new mini-districts. Top administrators will have to apply for new positions and many may be forced to return to schools as teachers and principals for less pay.

To some extent, Cortines and Miller have been forced into their roughneck roles by a crushing deadline. Both were brought into the district last fall on a mission to effect sweeping change in only six months, a period that is already half over. Cortines is to leave in July, after a new superintendent is installed. Miller’s stay is indefinite.

One of their strategies has been to keep up a drumbeat of provocative announcements, beginning in December with the selection of the Army Corps of Engineers to help in school construction and culminating last week with the release of the reorganization plan.

The headlines don’t always play well with elected officials who could be useful to the district.

“Cortines operates through the media,” said Bill Mabie, chief of staff for state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), the Latino power broker who has introduced a bill to study breaking up the district. “That’s his forum. They make announcements and they get play. But I don’t think these are things where they are out there communicating with community members.”

Mabie said Polanco has no position on the reorganization because he didn’t have an advance copy of the plan to study.

“If you want the buy-in, what you want to do is brief people on it,” Mabie said.

Miller, in particular, has rubbed people wrong with his strategy of abruptly taking controversial positions. Two such decisions--his recommendations to scrap the Belmont Learning Complex and a combined elementary-high school in South Gate because of environmental problems--came at a steep price. They outraged numerous Latino leaders whose tolerance of the reform-minded school board was already strained by the ouster last fall of former Supt. Ruben Zacarias in favor of Cortines and Miller.

The Los Angeles City Council even jumped in, threatening in a 12-1 vote to hold up approval of other potential new school sites if the district doesn’t reconsider Belmont. In fact, the district does not need council approval for most school sites, and Miller said in an interview that he sees no reason to voluntarily submit proposals for city review.

Miller has antagonized Councilman Nate Holden by proclaiming his determination to build a high school on the former Ambassador Hotel site. Holden believes Wilshire Boulevard businesses would suffer.

“It’s abuse of power,” Holden said. “They got the control they wanted. They used Belmont as a guise to do it. Now this guy can go around town like he’s some kind of czar.”

Miller and Cortines say they knew the job they were asked to do would not make everyone happy.

The goal, Cortines said, is to take the painful measures--and bear the inevitable backlash--in the short time allotted him.

“If I can deal with the most difficult issues before the new superintendent comes, I think this district has a chance to focus on the most important thing, the education of children,” he said.

Cortines contested the view that he has been cavalier about alliances.

He said he has called on the teachers union several times, visited schools in all parts of the district, invited every local representative to meet with him, received phone calls from parents and gone to city council meetings in several small cities, including South Gate.

“There are no enemies,” he said. “There are only miles to go before I sleep.”

Indeed, in some cases, the two leaders have taken pains to neutralize potential opposition.

For example, knowing that the decision to kill the South Gate project would provoke ill feeling, Miller quickly forged an agreement with the community’s tightly knit leadership on alternative sites.

“I was a little surprised at how quickly they were willing to go along with what we were proposing,” said South Gate Mayor Hector de la Torre.

To some extent, the negative reactions to Cortines and Miller reflect their strong personalities. The most bitter criticism is aimed at Miller, whose immense self-confidence and sometimes stinging wit have even led to a rift with one of his closest friends.

“I want to be supportive, but I’m struggling to find out how to be supportive,” said David Abel, a lifelong friend who lured Miller out of his real estate business to take on the job of managing new school construction, and has since felt shut out of decision-making. Abel is a member of the committee that oversees the $2.4-billion Proposition BB school construction and repair bond.

Cortines, whose temper can strike fear in subordinates, has championed the multi-front campaign, saying he has pushed Miller to tackle difficult problems all at once.

“I have never been a single-concept person,” he said.

Some observers worry that by taking on adversaries on so many fronts the reformers could become bogged down.

“Even radicals have to build coalitions and have to build support and build a constituency,” said one respected commentator on Los Angeles public affairs who did not want to be identified. “Increasingly you wonder whether these guys are going to be able to build a real beachhead for their reform by the way they’ve operated.”

Still, that observer judged their “pigheaded” ways preferable to the greater sin of trying “to buy everybody off by sacrificing the reform agenda.”

The final test of the reform team’s method may prove to be negotiations with the 40,000-member United Teachers-Los Angeles, which almost certainly will continue beyond Cortines’ scheduled July 1 departure. Miller has committed to stay through the signing of a contract.

Miller’s opening proposal strikes at numerous perks that union members hold dear.

But union President Day Higuchi said he has found Cortines easy to talk to and praised him for making himself available to the union. He said he is optimistic that the negotiations will get past Cortines and Miller’s hard-line rhetoric.

“Once you beat them up, there seems to be some give in them and they seem reasonable,” Higuchi said. “I don’t know why they do that. It doesn’t seem to be necessary, unless it’s to create a perception [that], ‘My God, these guys are taking action!’ ”