Board Seized the Moment in Forcing a Change at the Top

In a transition of power that had all the appearance of a coup, a new chief executive took the reins of Los Angeles Unified on Wednesday, officially relieving Supt. Ruben Zacarias of day-to-day authority over his staff.

The dramatic changeover came about without a plan, without an executive search and without even a public hearing. It was precipitated by an emergency meeting only three days earlier in a Century City law office, participants said.

The meeting, about a school construction problem in South Gate, was attended by Los Angeles Board of Education members Genethia Hayes and Valerie Fields, who had gone simply to watch senior staff face a grilling.

Fields said they came away alarmed by the specter of Belmont II: a new environmental disaster was boiling up right under their noses, and no one had told them about it. No budget; no one in charge; $39 million already spent; and nothing to show but a soup of unsolved toxic problems.

Those revelations came on the heels of a district auditor’s report last month faulting management for the Belmont Learning Complex fiasco. That $200-million project may not be finished.

Just two days after the South Gate meeting, the two board members joined a bare majority in placing the $7-billion school district in the hands of former school board member Howard Miller, a man who had not been in the spotlight for 20 years.

He was a stranger to most of them until three weeks ago when mayoral aide Steve Soboroff recommended him to head the district’s facilities division.

The political climate that supported the expansion of his role began this summer, amid a series of informal conversations among an elite coterie of leaders from business, university and philanthropic circles.

Several of those involved said it became clear that Zacarias had to go, that as a longtime veteran of the district he could not be counted on to dramatically improve either the image or the performance of the city’s schools.

But they also worried that any direct action to oust him would be politically perilous because it could touch off a backlash in the Latino community. That is what had happened only months earlier when rumors surfaced that board newcomers Hayes, Mike Lansing and Caprice Young wanted to block a contract extension for Zacarias.

Any threat to remove the superintendent would be met with “massive demonstrations in support of Zacarias,” state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) said at the time.

So the consensus was that the 70-year-old Zacarias had to want to go. And, to that end, it was thought that he needed a “soft place to land,” insiders said, perhaps a job teaching at USC or UCLA.

But Zacarias wasn’t interested. Not only would he not leave voluntarily, he publicly demanded to be allowed to stay on in the job another five years.

It wouldn’t be long, however, before the opportunity to once again isolate Zacarias presented itself. And when it did, it was clear from the earlier discussions that the embattled superintendent did not have support from the city’s leaders.

Contacted on Wednesday, Mayor Richard Riordan asserted, as he has all along, that he has had “zero involvement” in any move against Zacarias. Sources close to Riordan said the mayor was notified of the school board’s intention to hire Miller just minutes before it was publicly announced.

Nonetheless, he welcomed it.

“My impression is that Howard Miller is extremely able,” the mayor said. Miller was an early supporter of Riordan’s 1993 mayoral bid, but he and Riordan are not personally close.

Riordan said Miller’s ascendance will “liberate” Zacarias, allowing him to oversee the entire system. “I think this is a good thing for Ruben.”

But other sources close to the board put the action in a different, more negative, light.

Miller Has Long History With District

“Zacarias was fired for all intents and purposes,” one source close to the board and familiar with its deliberations said. “He was stripped of exactly 100% of his authority. When [Zacarias] ‘welcomed’ Howard Miller to his staff, it was like the Pakistani prime minister welcoming that general who took over his country.”

In 1979, Miller was well-known in Los Angeles as a liberal and thoughtful educator who met his political end over his collaboration with the proponents of court-ordered school integration. Targeted by the anti-busing group BusStop, Miller was dumped from the Los Angeles Board of Education and promptly retired from public life.

“I went totally private,” Miller said in a Wednesday morning interview. “I lived a completely private life focused on my family, which turned out to be healthy.”

A lawyer and commercial real estate developer, Miller restricted his public activities to Jewish organizations. He was president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, and then a board member of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

With his three sons grown, Miller was available again and an old friend persuaded him to attend a conference at the Getty Center on the school district’s plans to build 100 schools.

The seminar led to a series of summer planning sessions meant to inject new values of community involvement and architectural innovation into the school building program.

Instead, the fact-finding process brought Miller and members of the Proposition BB committee to an ugly discovery: The district was so far behind in identifying and buying school sites that it was about to lose $900 million in state bond funds--half the money needed to build the 100 schools.

“There should be people in the streets protesting the failure of the school district to build schools for their children,” Miller said.

His outrage inspired him to a fury of action that isn’t surprising to longtime admirers.

“Howard is extremely bright, very intelligent, very creative, a person with high energy who is focused in terms of analytical skills and would certainly be described as a quick study,” said Harry Handler, a former Los Angeles schools superintendent now teaching at UCLA.

Mayoral aide Soboroff, who heads the BB committee, previously did not know Miller, but quickly became a backer.

Early this fall, Soboroff proposed that the school board hire Miller as a facilities czar to run the school building program.

The board jumped at the idea, based both on Miller’s eminent self-assurance and on the admiration he already held from board members David Tokofsky and Fields.

“I have watched him in many roles of his life,” said Fields, a former aide to Mayor Tom Bradley. “He’s an extraordinarily capable person.”

Fields said he also has a great ability to defuse hot moments with humor, a trait Miller illustrated with a puckish smile, explaining why he accepted everything but the title czar:

“From my reading of history, czars were usually wrong and often assassinated,” Miller said.

In his new position, Miller became allies with Barry Groveman, attorney for the district’s environmental safety team. Groveman had been instrumental in digging up the problems that now threatened the completion of Belmont.

The two men were drawn together by their mutual belief that they had been called upon to end the nightmare of district mismanagement.

“The attitude of the district is ‘Hold off the bad news as long as possible and make up the good news,’ ” Miller said.

Board Members Learn of Problems

All the forces for change came into play Sunday in Groveman’s Century City office.

Miller called the meeting of senior district staff to try to get some answers on South Gate, a combination elementary school and high school long overdue in the heavily populated community southeast of downtown. The property is being assembled from a collection of old factories, each presenting distinct environmental legacies.

Miller and Groveman wanted to know how much had been spent, who was in charge and what were the environmental protections.

Fields said she and board president Hayes attended only to listen. She said she learned that $39 million had been spent with little environmental inquiry. She came away thinking that South Gate could be worse than Belmont.

The most glaring of the many problems, Fields said, is that no study had been done to determine the location of underground oil and gas pipes, despite a state law prohibiting the construction of schools on top of such pipes.

Fields had already been shaken by previous negative reviews of environmental practices, both pointing to severe management failures.

“I learned that . . . the district is out of control,” she said. “Those are harsh words, but it’s true.”

Usually a sound sleeper, Fields tossed all night, pondering what to do.

Miller and Groveman took the next step, briefing board members Caprice Young and Mike Lansing on Monday. Then, sensing the moment had arrived, they presented the concept of putting Miller in charge to the whole board in closed session Tuesday.

Fields said that although she didn’t hear the full plan until Tuesday, she had no trouble accepting it.

“We need a sea change,” she said. “We have to change the culture of that district. There is a culture that has been ingrained for decades. Everything is interwoven.”

Times staff writers John Mitchell, Jim Newton and Tim Rutten contributed to this story.

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Turmoil at the Top

Following are the events that led to a showdown Wednesday between Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias and former board member Howard Miller over control of the district:

Sept. 21: Board of Education appoints Miller to new position of facilities reform executive to revamp the management of school construction and maintenance.

Oct. 10: Board President Genethia Hayes and board member Valerie Fields attend a meeting of senior staff called by Miller and district environmental attorney Barry Groveman. They learn that $39 million has been spent on polluted land for two new schools in South Gate without adequate environmental assessments.

Oct. 10-11: Groveman and Miller plan a strike at district bureaucracy that they believe is careening out of control.

Oct. 11: Groveman briefs board members Caprice Young and Mike Lansing.

Oct. 12: In closed session, Groveman and Miller propose to the full board that Miller assume authority over all district staff. The board votes 4 to 2 in favor with one abstention.

Oct. 13: Zacarias declares that he will not relinquish direct authority over his three top deputies.

THE BATTLE OVER L.A. SCHOOLS

“There should be people in the streets protesting the failure of the school district to build schools for their children.”-- Howard Miller

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“The notion that the [top district managers] no longer have direct access to me is unacceptable.”-- Ruben Zacarias