If Fresno residents want to transform the dropout factories in the city's largest school district, they should stop hoping for a savior.

This literally has been going on for 40 years: too many people thinking that Fresno Unified can be turned around by finding the right superintendent.

The facts are that the district is too big, its key stakeholders too entrenched and its challenges too daunting to be solved by sheer force of one person's intellect and personality.

If time travel were possible, even a young Doc Buchanan -- as brilliant and politically astute as he was in building Clovis Unified -- would be swallowed whole by Fresno Unified's quicksand. But here we are, with Superintendent Michael Hanson in his seventh year at the helm, and a majority of board members and many in the community still pin hopes for a turnaround exclusively on his shoulders.

Exhibit A of this failed strategy: The board majority's shocking indifference to high dropout rates, particularly among minority students, at most of the district's high schools.

The board should have ordered Hanson to increase efforts to keep students in school and to find out why they're dropping out. Trustees Valerie Davis, Cal Johnson, Janet Ryan and Tony Vang instead said things were fine. Or that Hanson simply needed more time to figure matters out.

Loyalty is a virtue. But blind loyalty, to borrow from satirist Ambrose Bierce, "is as irrational as a headless hen."

The four trustees now have been exposed. Hanson finally acknowledged Tuesday that more needs to be done about the dropout problem and commissioned a task force to boost graduation rates.

The question is, can Fresno -- for once -- get out of its own way and bolster student performance and, in turn, strengthen the local economy?

Or will this latest attempt to prepare students for college or full-time jobs falter because of conflicts between pro-Hanson and anti-Hanson camps?

Heading the task force is Juan Arambula. He is a former Fresno Unified trustee, Fresno County supervisor and state lawmaker. Hanson's critics see Arambula as the superintendent's ally and suggest the task force is more public relations than reform. But Arambula has shown an independent streak throughout his political career, particularly as an Assembly member.

Arambula can demonstrate his independence immediately by insisting to the superintendent that the group not be made up of the usual community leaders. The task force should include students, vocational education advocates and young entrepreneurs. Fresno Unified needs to have the dropout problem -- as well as its failing discipline policies -- examined by new eyes.

This task force is a big test for Hanson, the board majority and the city.

Hanson has to demonstrate that he can constructively engage people outside his circle of blind loyalists. He must show that he can listen, learn and implement. He got off to a bad start by informing only his favorite trustees before he announced the task force.

The board majority must prove that it is more than a rubber stamp for Hanson's ideas and that its allegiance is to the district's 73,000 students and their families.

The community must stop thinking that hiring the "right" superintendent will magically transform Fresno Unified. That strategy has failed many times.

And will fail again.