The Cortines Conundrum

Time is running out in the search for the next superintendent of the Los Angeles public schools. The June 1 deadline accommodates the schedule of interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who insists he will leave by the end of that month. But does it give the school board enough time to hire the best person? It certainly doesn’t appear so.

Six names are under discussion, as reported Wednesday by Times education writer Louis Sahagun. The search committee is still taking names, and the official list of finalists is not scheduled to be presented to board members until the week of May 22. That would give the school board only about a week to make a deal with the person chosen to take up the challenge of managing a district that many fear is unmanageable.

The next superintendent will be the fourth permanent school chief selected since the 1990 ouster of Leonard Britton, an outsider who came from the Miami school system. Since then, the district’s problems have worsened.

Test scores are chronically low; most of the district’s 710,000 students do not perform at grade level. Teachers are in short supply and threatening to strike unless they get a huge raise. School construction is at a standstill because of the fiasco of the now-abandoned Belmont Learning Complex, forcing more campuses to go year-round and more children to board buses for long rides to distant campuses.

Whether the new school chief approves or not, reorganization will soon divide the Los Angeles Unified School District into 11 mini-districts. The intent is to put reform closer to schools, although the result could be the creation of even more fiefdoms resistant to change. Each mini-district will have its own general superintendent. They are to be selected by the end of June. The new school chief should be involved in those major appointments so he or she won’t have to inherit someone else’s team.

Cortines, popular and effective, will be a hard act to follow. The next superintendent would benefit from a lengthy transition, one that would allow time to learn the school system, pick a team and build public confidence. The timetable set by Cortines won’t allow that.

Cortines has refused to extend his six-month tenure despite entreaties from nearly all quarters. His looming deadline might be imposing discipline on a notoriously slow district, but the time pressure will undercut the board’s ability to ensure that it chooses the very best new superintendent.

With public demands for a breakup being pressed, the board’s choice may be the last chief to preside over an intact district. Parents are fed up with low scores, inadequate books and supplies, crowded classrooms and a revolving door at the top.

The school board must think about what it will do if it can’t conduct a careful and thorough selection process by the Cortines deadline. Will it implore him to stay longer? Will it appoint yet another interim superintendent? Heading up the L.A. Unified School District has got to be one of the toughest public jobs in the nation. Filling that job can’t be given short shrift.