Zacarias

Ruben Zacarias, the next superintendent of Los Angeles schools, will soon get his chance to prove he can wrest change from a system whose test scores fall frighteningly below the national average in reading and math and which has a dropout rate more than double the statewide average. He promises to move quickly to boost dissipating public confidence in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which clearly needs radical restructuring that improves student achievement.

Unveiling specifics of his plans for the Los Angeles Unified School District, Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias said Wednesday that if promoted to superintendent he would dedicate himself to improving student achievement.

It is now Ruben Zacarias' turn. The new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District inherits a troubled, overcrowded district. A veteran of the system for more than 30 years, Zacarias knows the problems intimately. The question is: What can he do about them? The former deputy superintendent promised a great deal during his campaign for the top LAUSD job.

The Los Angeles Board of Education has scheduled an interview today with Ramon C. Cortines, its primary candidate for interim successor to Supt. Ruben Zacarias, but talks on the superintendent's departure appeared unlikely to conclude before Thursday.

The Los Angeles school board last week demonstrated that it can move quickly on district business if it wants to. However, it's unfortunate that its action to strip Supt. Ruben Zacarias of direct oversight of the district was its defining moment of expediency. The board's actions were ill-conceived, illegal and will do nothing to resolve the issues that some board members purport to care so deeply about.

IT ONLY GETS WORSE from here for jurors in Zacarias Moussaoui's case, who earlier this week voted unanimously to continue his capital sentencing trial by linking him beyond a reasonable doubt to the 9/11 hijacking plot. Now those same folks, who already have given so much of their time and energy, will hear and see and feel the brunt of the emotional force left in the wake of those terror attacks.

Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias is the Los Angeles Unified School District's No. 2 official and its highest-ranking Latino. The 67-year-old Chatsworth resident boasts a 30-year career in the nation's second-largest school district that began with a teaching job in his childhood neighborhood of Boyle Heights. And most recently his name has been pushed by Latino activists as the successor to retiring schools Supt. Sid Thompson.

Ruben Zacarias, the new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, has asked for and got from the Board of Education three deputies, tripling the number under his predecessor. Then-Supt. Sid Thompson made do with one--Zacarias himself. The new chief came into office with promises of efficiency and reform. This seems a curiously bloated beginning, but he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias pledged Monday to make improvement of third-grade reading a major focus this year and said he plans to severely reduce the district's diverse and often incoherent textbook offerings. Zacarias said he will ask the Board of Education to adopt only three textbook series, in place of at least 13 now in use, and demand that each high school and the schools that feed into them choose just one.

Extending in one hand a promise of help and in the other a demand for results, Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias assembled 100 principals Friday to kick-start his plan for improving the district's poorest-scoring schools. Principals leaving the three-hour, closed-door session said Zacarias offered some concrete aid, such as extra money to train inexperienced teachers and to hold class sessions after school and on Saturdays.