Zacarias

Ramon C. Cortines, a career educator who will soon become interim superintendent of the ailing Los Angeles Unified School District, said Friday he is drafting a blueprint to patch a system "hurting and hampering the children we are employed to help." The blueprint will be about "involving parents, supporting teachers and encouraging administrators to provide leadership," said Cortines, renowned for turning around ailing urban school districts. Appearing with Supt.

Determined to end a leadership crisis that has paralyzed the Los Angeles public schools for three weeks, the Board of Education agreed unanimously Thursday night on a plan to end the tenure of Supt. Ruben Zacarias and to pave the way for his successor. The board voted 7-0 to pay Zacarias $750,000 to retire, making it one of the most lucrative buyout deals ever for an American superintendent. Ramon C.

"How California Compares" (Oct. 27) showed California at or near the bottom on most measures of academic performance: test scores, average class size, spending per pupil, etc. Interestingly, however, the ranking for number of administrative support staff was 16th out of 50 states. Supt. Ruben Zacarias, though well-intentioned and a caring man, was ineffective in every reform effort he started. A former teacher in LAUSD, I have watched and participated in this district as a teacher, parent and interested professional for over 30 years.

A bid to negotiate an end to Los Angeles Unified's 3-week-old power struggle appears to have failed, leading Ramon C. Cortines to say Wednesday that he is no longer interested in temporarily filling the district's top job. "I have withdrawn my name from consideration as of this morning," said Cortines, 67, renowned for navigating school districts through troubled times.

The controversy over Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ruben Zacarias' ouster has driven a wedge between two of Mayor Richard Riordan's closest allies and has helped deepen discontent among many Riordan backers with the man their leader has endorsed to succeed him.

The Los Angeles Board of Education postponed its interview of interim superintendent candidate Ramon C. Cortines on Tuesday after he and Supt. Ruben Zacarias suggested it would be inappropriate to conduct such a meeting before there is a vacancy. During the six-hour closed session to consider the replacement of Zacarias and other matters, the board received several new nominations and voted 4 to 2 to approve the general terms of a contract with Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller.

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.

It's not the way I'd want to go. I wouldn't want to be pulled from one side and then the other, torn apart by forces that seemed beyond my control. I wouldn't want to be in the position of not knowing whether I wanted to save my job or preserve my self-respect. I wouldn't want an elected board trying to throw me out as crowds hollered to keep me in. I wouldn't want to be all at once a scapegoat and a hero.

For all its racially tinged rhetoric and human-relations sermonizing, the fight over the ouster of L.A. school Supt. Ruben Zacarias doesn't have all that much to do with race. It has even less to do with Zacarias. Instead, at the heart of the debate is a power struggle between two elites--one emerging, the other established--with each jockeying for influence over a dysfunctional yet integral part of L.A. public infrastructure.

The ethnic political war that those of us who care about Los Angeles have long feared has begun. Its first casualty was Ruben Zacarias, the city's flawed but fundamentally decent public schools' superintendent. He was ousted two weeks ago in a messy coup d'etat by school board members who claim to be reformers but who carried out their plot with the crude zeal of machine pols. Nor will Zacarias be the last casualty.