Sundown for Zacarias
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.
I wouldn’t want to be a symbol in the politics of race, supported not for my accomplishments but for my heritage.
I wouldn’t want to see the authority of my job eroded to leave me powerless and isolated at the top.
I wouldn’t want to have to formulate a desperate, last-minute plan in the waning moments of my career, my dignity in disarray, clinging to the edge.
I wouldn’t want to be Ruben Zacarias.
He stands before us on wobbly legs, a pathetic symbol of the confusion that shakes L.A.’s school district like an earthquake of the apocalypse.
Neither in nor out, Zacarias, at age 70, finds himself where I’m sure he never intended to be, at the pinnacle of his career with a $200-million monkey on his back.
*
By comparison, little was said or even known of Zacarias before the calamity of the Belmont Learning Center. If it weren’t for snippets of coverage, routine functions of the L.A. Unified School District would have gone almost unnoticed.
Only educational activists and reporters paid heed to the undercurrents of education in a district composed of 700,000 students. Only some would cry out that in an institution geared for learning, many of its learners didn’t even have books.
The rest of us? Well, the schools seemed to be open, no one was on strike at the moment, crime was edging downward, nothing much to worry about.
A lot of us didn’t even bother to vote in the last election that included a school board race. A scant 19% turned out, just enough to elect the school board candidates Dick Riordan had in mind. After that, everything seemed to drone on as before. . . .
Until Belmont.
That was the trigger that fired the gun pointed directly at Supt. Zacarias, a career educator who had seen his school board support dissolve like snow in a heat wave.
Suddenly the massive buildings that were to solve school overcrowding in the city’s downtown section became the classic metaphor for the district’s sloppiness and its administrator’s inefficiency.
It was a disaster beyond precedence.
We learned with the impact of a thunderclap that the Belmont Center was being built over an abandoned oil field that was replete with hazards. Among them: cancer-causing chemicals and a volatile, potentially explosive gas.
One could discern the slow, faint sounds of a bugle in the distance. It was playing taps for Zacarias.
*
The person in charge is always to blame when a dream collapses on his watch. Belmont was the big excuse the school board needed. Riordan wanted Zacarias out and so did the majority that the mayor helped establish.
They tried to exile the superintendent first by appointing a chief executive for the district, effectively isolating Zacarias at the top, a lonely place to be. Now they’re trying to figure out a way to dump him over the edge, greenbacks fluttering down behind him on his way to oblivion.
The superintendent is fighting back, supported by some students, a lot of well-meaning parents and a handful of Latino politicos who seem to be more concerned for la raza than for the man himself.
One school board member, David Tokofsky, has called for a more measured and humane route to a new superintendent. Another, Valerie Fields, wishes that the man who has given his life to education would retire and leave with “the dignity and respect he wishes.”
It may be too late for that now.
Whatever happens, given the current standoff, we know it will dissolve into an ugly battle, either within the confines of the district or in court. At the very least, it will be a lesson in civics for the LAUSD students on how not to run a school district.
Perhaps they’ll do better someday.
If I were Zacarias I think I’d walk away. I’d gather my pride and the accomplishments of my career and say that I’d done my best. If, in the end, that wasn’t good enough, then it might be time for someone else to try.
I would hold my head high, stride out the door and never, not once, look back.
*
Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com
