Zacarias to Lead L.A. Schools

The board of Los Angeles’ massive public school system Friday chose Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias to lead the 670,000-student district, endorsing his plans to appoint a powerful new business czar and target the 100 worst schools for immediate improvement.

Zacarias, the 68-year-old son of Mexican immigrants, will be the first fluent Spanish speaker and only the second Latino to serve as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which in recent years has become dominated by immigrant students. The district veteran had been considered the front-runner to replace Supt. Sid Thompson, who will retire next month. “I do not want to be seen as the Latino superintendent,” Zacarias said, as mariachi music drifted into the board chambers from a Cinco de Mayo celebration outdoors. “I’m very proud of my heritage, but I’ve spent 30 years working for all children.”

Acknowledging that the job is too big for one person, Zacarias said he would bring in an outsider with business experience to manage functions ranging from cafeteria purchasing to computerization. He said he would give that person full authority to hire and fire personnel.

Several school board members said Friday that the district should consider the unusual step of linking the new superintendent’s compensation to performance incentives in his contract.

Accessibility Promised

In keeping with his populist image, Zacarias said he will be more accessible to the public than past superintendents, staging monthly forums throughout the sprawling school system and appearing on the district’s television station every two weeks.

“I want to personalize this district,” he said.

The 5-2 vote to give the job to Zacarias brought whoops of glee from supporters in the school board chambers, including the Latino activists who had doggedly campaigned on his behalf for most of the year. On Friday, the activists said they considered his selection both a personal vindication and a victory for Latino children, who make up more than two-thirds of the student body.

“Today is an exuberant day, a historic day for L.A. Unified,” said Gina Alonso, chairwoman of the pro-Zacarias faction, which called itself United Communities.

Mayor Richard Riordan, one of the school district’s most vocal and consistent critics, greeted Zacarias’ appointment with enthusiasm.

“I think it’s great news,” Riordan said. “Dr. Zacarias is a great choice.”

Riordan said he believed that the superintendent needs to move forcefully to surround himself with top-notch leaders.

“Ruben has said that he’s going to hire an outstanding budget czar,” Riordan said. “That and an outstanding education leader will give him the people under him to move ahead. His main thing is to be a leader.”

Zacarias was on the losing end of a similar 5-2 vote when Thompson was chosen in the 1992 race for superintendent. He takes control of the district during a time of great promise--last month, voters awarded the district a $2.4-billion school repair bond and the state recently has increased funding to public education.

Challenges Ahead

But it will also be a time of great challenge, with the strain of unprecedented student enrollments, growing pressure to tie financial support to results, and district foes striving to break away from the system--which Zacarias has predicted could occur during his tenure.

The two board members who voted against him--board President Jeff Horton and immediate past President Mark Slavkin--said the 661-campus system is in need of a shake-up that they were not certain Zacarias could spark.

Horton said he would have preferred Daniel Domenech, a Long Island regional superintendent who engineered the takeover of a failing district there. Slavkin said he wanted to name William E.B. Siart, a former banker who promised to streamline administration.

“I didn’t think Ruben was the best one to make the radical changes I think need to happen now,” Horton said. “But I’m hoping to be proven wrong.”

In a terse statement issued after Friday’s decision, Siart said: “I think I have the vision and the experience to provide leadership for the dramatic changes needed in Los Angeles schools. That is why I applied for this job. The board has selected Dr. Zacarias and I wish him success.”

To help ensure progress, the board will consider building incentives into the contract it will negotiate over the next month for the $164,000-a-year job. Several board members said the executive search firm that helped narrow a group of 50 potential applicants recommended tying compensation, or perhaps bonuses, to progress toward such goals as improving student test scores and spending school bond money expeditiously.

With tears of joy in her eyes, board member Victoria Castro--Zacarias’ strongest board ally--said she does not believe Zacarias will need such incentives.

Firsthand Knowledge

Zacarias has the advantage of entering the high-stress, high-turnover job with broad experience, having witnessed its problems firsthand for three decades; initially, from the trenches as a teacher at the Eastside’s Breed Street Elementary and, more recently, from its upper administrative echelons.

Yet such knowledge also has its disadvantages, detractors say, because Zacarias has developed a series of allegiances and commitments to the status quo.

Former Assemblywoman Paula Boland, a vocal critic of the district’s huge bureaucracy, said Zacarias’ appointment would not stop her efforts to sever the San Fernando Valley’s ties to the district.

“I don’t know this man, so I don’t want to impugn him,” said Boland, chairwoman of the Valley breakup group Finally Restoring Excellence in Education.

“But I know the history of the school board and this school district, and it’s not a good one,” she said.

Boland added that she believes that with Zacarias as superintendent the school district will continue business as usual.

“There’s no plan from the board of what they want the superintendent to do,” Boland said. “It’s unfortunate that we’re going to have more of what we’ve had in the past.”

Other San Fernando Valley residents were more sanguine about Zacarias’ appointment.

“I’m hoping that we see a lot of the changes he seemed to indicate he wanted to make,” said Lynda Levitan of the 31st District Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. “I think people really need to give him a fair chance.”

Geraldine R. Washington, president of the Los Angeles branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said her organization was satisfied that the district had conducted an open, competitive search for a new leader.

“I trust the judgment of that search committee. I also know [Zacarias] to be a fine person,” said Washington, who worked for the district for 33 years. “He has given his very best for the youngsters in the school district and he will continue to.”

But even some of Zacarias’ supporters questioned whether--at age 68--he has the vitality to make quick and dramatic moves, noting that the rigors of the interview process left him yawning during the announcement Friday morning.

“The only concern I have about Ruben is his age,” said parent Sylvester Hinton, part of a coalition that wants to carve a separate district out of the city’s inner core. “But he always answers your calls personally, which is a great change from the current superintendent.”

Campaigning against those perceptions during the week of public and private interviews with three superintendent finalists, Zacarias forcefully insisted that he would have the guts to be tough on stragglers, even those he considers friends.

Adopting a proposal made by Siart during his interviews with the school board, Zacarias said he would also clear a direct line of communication between the superintendent and the 27 managers of regional school groupings, known as cluster leaders.

Those specifics crystallized the support of a school board already slanted in Zacarias’ direction even before the search for alternatives began, board members said Friday.

It also helped a majority of the board justify rejecting the other two finalists: former First Interstate Bancorp CEO Siart and Domenech, who pulled out of the race earlier this week as it became increasingly clear that Zacarias would be the winner.

“Information we received from the other two [finalists] will be very valuable to Ruben,” said board member Julie Korenstein. “I really do wish we could have figured out a way to get all three of them.”

Merits of Search

Alonso and other Latino supporters said Zacarias is an ideal role model for children of immigrants enrolled in the school district because he was born in East Los Angeles to Mexican parents, began kindergarten in the district and rose to its top job.

Some of Zacarias’ supporters slammed the district for wasting money on a nationwide search when they could have simply appointed him, which three board members were ready to do a year ago, shortly after Thompson announced his resignation. The search cost about $95,000, though $40,000 of that was donated by a private foundation.

But those who lobbied for the search to be opened up--both nationally and, at the end, publicly during three weekend forums with the finalists--said the money was well-spent. They emphasized that they did not consider the choice of Zacarias a defeat because the process had forced him to thoroughly consider their views and to begin to articulate his vision for the district.

“What disturbed reformers was not so much Ruben, but the idea that he had three votes within 24 hours of [Thompson] saying he would not seek another contract,” said Mike Roos, president of the nonprofit school reform group LEARN, the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now.

The public and private forums helped Zacarias, Roos said, because “he clearly wasn’t stuck for ideas, his energy level was extremely high, and he was able to convince people that he had been in the shadows and was ready to lead.

“He clearly said, ‘I support LEARN,’ ” Roos said.

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall, Jim Newton, Lucille Renwick and Hector Tobar contributed to this story.

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Profile: Ruben Zacarias

Deputy L.A. Unified Supt. Ruben Zacarias will become superintendent when Sid Thompson steps down in June.

* Age: 68

* Education: USC graduate, with a bachelor’s degree in cinema. Also holds numerous teaching and administrative credentials, a master’s degree in school administration from Cal State L.A. and a doctorate in multicultural education from the University of San Francisco.

* Career highlights: Became a teacher at his East L.A. alma mater, Breed Street Elementary, in 1966 and rose to become the regional schools superintendent on the Eastside, where he increased test scores and attained the highest student attendance record in the district. Moved to downtown headquarters to become associate superintendent in 1986 and deputy superintendent in 1991.