But for all the changes over the past year, all the tearing down and building back up, many issues remain unresolved. The district has made little progress on building badly needed schools, meaning that all 49 of its high schools will likely be forced on multitrack, year-round schedules within the next six years. And pressure to break up the district is mounting in Sacramento, where state lawmakers say they've seen too many reform plans come and go at Los Angeles Unified. Many observers give the new board and its interim management team high marks for the changes made so far. Mayor Richard Riordan, who helped elect the reformers, praised their decision to clean out the district's former top tier of bureaucrats.
Some board members agree, citing the management change as one of their biggest successes.
But it also cost them dearly, enraging many in the city's Latino community who resented what they considered the board's humiliating treatment of Zacarias. That anger still lingers, straining relations between the district and its biggest block of parents. The board's decision to abandon Belmont, an over-budget high school built atop an oil field seeping explosive and toxic gases, further polluted that atmosphere since the community that Belmont would have served is largely Latino. Other reforms were easier to implement. Few people objected to changing the district's reading program to place more emphasis on phonics.