When Los Angeles school board members approved a plan to divide the mammoth district into 11 smaller districts, they assigned a Herculean task to be completed in a miniscule amount of time.
In business terms, imagine creating 11 small companies from one giant corporation in just eight weeks and in the process hiring a chief executive and 11 company presidents.
While the search for the CEO in this case the top-level district superintendent is already well underway, applications for the individual district positions only went out last week, a day after the school board approved the plan created by interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines and acting Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller.
Their goal is to have the breakup completed, with individual superintendents hired, by June.
Officials insist the hiring of those 11 superintendents is key to the eventual success of the reorganization plan. But how can the best people for the jobs really be hired in less than two months?
Even in the fast-paced world of e-business, companies take between three and six months to hire CEOs. As a result, some school observers fear the district could be sacrificing quality and detail for the momentum that officials are trying to generate to push through all of these changes as quickly as possible.
“All of the merits are in favor of taking additional time on this,” said Mark Slavkin, a former school board member and communications director for Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project, a local school reform group. “But on the political side, the district can’t afford to be seen as slowing down.”
Added school board member Julie Korenstein: “For me, this is almost moving too quickly. But if we’re able to ultimately serve the schools better, it will be worth it.”
General chaos
The troubled hiring process is just one example of the general chaos and insecurity enveloping district headquarters at 450 N. Grand Ave. Although the hundreds of administrators who work there have suspected for some time that the breakup plan would be approved, the reality of the situation is just sinking in.
“No one is clear on how many people will be eliminated,” said Dan Chernow, executive director of the school management program at UCLA. “I think there’s been panic for some time.”
Last week’s school board approval of the breakup plan did little to alleviate that confusion. The 200-page plan contained a chart that seemed to outline how many jobs would be eliminated and how much money would be saved. But on closer inspection, the chart merely shows the amount of money and jobs that will be shifted from the central office to the smaller districts.
For months, parents and other school observers have been using this chart to understand how the new plan would work. In truth, however, few details have yet been worked out. While the chart indicates that 333 jobs will ultimately be eliminated, school officials had different interpretations and acknowledged the number is likely to change as the plan is implemented.
“We hope that within the next week we will know more about how many jobs there will be and how much money will be saved,” said one insider.
Officials insist that ultimately, the new plan is not about eliminating jobs or saving money but improving the district by reallocating power and money away from the central office and closer to individual campuses.
“Is it an absolute road map? No,” said Bill Siart, chairman of the board of Excellent Education Development and a former candidate for superintendent. “But what it lacks in detail, it makes up for in a clear thrust for decentralization.”
Many agree that it’s at least worth giving the plan a chance to see if something can finally fix LAUSD.
“It’s confusing, as anything that is new and radical is,” said Korenstein. “We can’t predict what’s going to happen, but it could mean a great LAUSD.”
The hiring game
In order to have the new districts up and running by next fall, Miller said he would like to see the new superintendents hired by June or July at the latest. “It’s a good job, and I expect we’ll see an excellent pool of candidates,” Miller said in a recent interview.
Each of the 11 positions will pay between $136,000 and $150,000 a year, depending on the applicant’s experience, and those selected will have two-year contracts with LAUSD.
But when officials say they want to find the best people, that could leave out many administrators now working within the district. There’s a growing belief that in order to have real change, it will be necessary to hire people not already a part of the much-criticized LAUSD bureaucracy. Many of the candidates likely will come from other school districts, but some school officials hope at least a few applicants will come from other fields.
Hiring from outside the district comes with its own complications. Candidates who are already employed may have difficulty arranging their schedules to accommodate interviews by the LAUSD, which is allocating only four days in May for candidates to appear before committees within each yet-to-be created local district. Once those committees narrow down the field to three candidates in each area, Cortines will choose the new superintendents.
“It’s not like putting a man on the moon,” said Slavkin, “but it is difficult.”
Ads placed in Education Week just days before the board approved the plan say applicants must have 10 years of experience as a full-time certified education professional, at least five years of which must be in public school administration and no fewer than three spent as a principal.
Critics had hoped those restrictions would be eased to make room for nontraditional candidates from other fields, but when the plan was passed, the requirements were not changed.
“If this means we end up with the usual suspects from within the district applying for these jobs, nothing is going to change,” said school board member David Tokofsky.
