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LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines said yesterday he plans to initiate an immediate nationwide search to replace the district’s out-going chief of external affairs, Edgar Zazueta.

“We are beginning the search immediately, we have put the word out,” Cortines told LA School Report at the Instructional Technology Initiative Task Force meeting at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex. “We want to get someone in quickly so there is some lapover time.”

Although the school board is undertaking a search for a successor to Cortines, he said he wants to hire the district’s chief lobbyist and he also wants Zazueta to participate in the transition.

“He wasn’t sure he could do the job when I hired him nine years ago, he was just a kid, but he showed he could do it well,” Cortines said of the 35-year-old Zazueta, who represented the district in key policy issues over the past decade, lobbying in Sacramento and Washington. He was also the face of the District during discussions of the Local Control Funding Formula, which changed how public education is financed.

The position, which last year paid Zazueta $156,577.98, will be for approximately the same amount, Cortines said. Zazueta is resigning to join the Association of California School Administrators as its new director of policy and government relations.

“It will be a hard job to fill,” Cortines said.