L.A. School Board to Exclude Public From Search for Superintendent

The Board of Education this week is reviewing a short list of candidates for the superintendent job, but members have declined to release the names and indicated they will not allow public participation in the selection process.

Board President Genethia Hayes said a June 5 target for concluding the deliberation will leave little time to have the candidates face public scrutiny.

Besides that, Hayes said, board members are inclined to keep the process to themselves.

“We feel it is the most important decision we will make, and we feel that it is ours to do,” Hayes said.

That’s a stark contrast to the method used the last time the board picked a superintendent, when the top three candidates had to make their best pitch for the job at a series of community meetings.

That process ended in the selection of Ruben Zacarias, a district insider who had worked his way up the management ladder from teacher and was widely promoted by Latino groups as the rightful heir to the district’s top job.

Zacarias was ousted in November after he clashed with the board over its decision to turn over many of his duties to a chief operating officer.

Some board members have criticized the process that was used to select Zacarias.

“I saw no value to it because I don’t think you have a beauty contest to select a superintendent,” said board member Valerie Fields, who took office shortly after Zacarias was named. “It has to be done very seriously in a contemplative way and not on the basis of who has movie star quality or who can bring the most supporters out to cheer them.”

Other board members said they are concerned that top candidates would not submit to the selection process if they knew their names would be disclosed.

“I think that type of exposure would possibly eliminate one or more of the top candidates,” board member Mike Lansing said.

After meeting about four and a half hours Monday to hear the selection committee’s recommendations, board members declined to even say how many names were on the list.

Sources close to the deliberations, however, said there were five names submitted to the board, including two big-city superintendents, former U.S. Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and Adam Urbanski, a union leader in Rochester, N.Y.

Two superintendents have previously been identified as possible candidates--Dennis Smith, who heads the Orange County school system in Orlando, Fla., and Houston Supt. Rod Paige.

However, Smith two weeks ago accepted a new job as superintendent of the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district in Orange County and Houston school trustees boosted Paige’s salary to $275,000, which is believed to be the highest in the nation among school chiefs.

The sources said Liam E. McGee, president of Bank of America Southern California who had been viewed as a possible candidate, is no longer.

Sources close to the selection process added that not all those who made the short list are actively seeking the job.

Romer is the only candidate who has made his desire for the job public.

Hayes said she expects the board to release finalists’ names once it has made a decision.

The decision to shun any disclosure until then has aroused some criticism from those who believe the job is too important to fill without the public’s involvement.

“I think there is a healthy middle ground between all and nothing,” said Mark Slavkin, a former board member who participated in the selection of Zacarias.

The debate has oddly reversed the roles of those who were engaged in a debate over the method that led to Zacarias’ selection.

At that time, leaders of the LEARN reform group were worried that the board was going to name Zacarias without considering any competition. They pushed for a nationwide search with public participation.

But LEARN board member William Ouchi, vice dean of the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, said he sees no reason for an open process this time.

“We have a board now in which we have a lot more confidence than we did before,” Ouchi said. The former board, he said, “didn’t really conduct a nationwide search. It was like, move them up the ladder as they had always done.”

Conversely, a spokesman for state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) said he found the open process to be healthy and productive. When the job was vacant three years ago, he believed Zacarias should have been named to the job without having to go through a competitive process.

Polanco, who has proposed legislation that would place a state monitor over the district, would like to see a more public review of the new candidates, said his administrative assistant, Bill Mabie.

“It’s just ironic that standards change with the whim of certain folks,” Mabie said.