By Chris Reed

It’s time for a tale of comic-book villainy from San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest school district and one in which voracious unions so dominate decision-making that a stunning 92 percent of the operating budget goes to employee compensation.

When 11 of every 12 dollars goes to pay and benefit, the squeeze on the rest of the budget is enormous. And so you see students forced to pay for educational supplies, in defiance of the California Constitution. And so you see 30-year-bonds used to pay for routine maintenance and short-lived electronics like laptops and iPads.

And you see money specifically designated to be used to subsidize school lunches for tens of thousands of students from poor families grabbed for adult employees — over and over and over.

Adult employees 3, poor schoolkids 0

This is from my U-T San Diego editorial:

“On scams and scandals large and small [in California], the motivation is often protecting the interests of public employees, whether or not it serves the public interest. …

” … when it comes to sheer obnoxiousness, a local example is tough to beat. We refer to the three reports this year of San Diego Unified improperly diverting money to adult employees from school lunch programs meant to help low-income students.

“In February, a state Senate report blasted the district for improperly taking at least $4.5 million in federal lunch funds to help pay for the salaries and benefits that consume more than 90 percent of the district’s operating budget.

“Last month, the state Department of Education demanded a refund of $13.4 million from San Diego Unified because it had used funds from a federally reimbursed state program meant to subsidize lunches for poor children for other purposes, starting with $10.9 million in employee salaries.

“Last week, the district announced it would stop using funds that are supposed to subsidize lunches for low-income students to pay for gifts to encourage good “attendance” and other positive behavior by cafeteria workers. About $300,000 had been diverted for that purpose over the past 12 years.

“We suppose this represents progress, because in the first two cases, the school district flatly denies it has done anything wrong — even though the state laid out a lengthy, specific, unrefuted list of district violations in its May 15 letter demanding repayment of the $13.4 million.

“Nevertheless, San Diego Unified officials seek to depict these reports as inter-government squabbles over accounting procedures. Instead, they’re more properly seen as a pathetic serial scandal involving a district that repeatedly raids funds meant to help tens of thousands of low-income students so it can give the money to adult employees.” 

Even for California, this is pathetic

Even by the appallingly low standards of California governance, this is pretty extreme.

San Diego Unified’s leaders should be ashamed. If they’re capable of being ashamed.

By Chris Reed

The state Senate committee report last week showing districts stealing federal funds meant for school lunch programs came as no surprise to students of California’s education establishment. There’s a strange mentality afflicting school governance in this state, an odd combination of an anything-goes ethos and a righteous sense of entitlement.

That’s why in recent years we’ve seen school districts in California caught lying about dropout rates. And about attendance rates, which determine state funding. And also about local property tax receipts, which can reduce state school funding depending on their amount.

We’ve also seen school districts’ legal but appalling abuse of school bonds, which used to be “construction bonds” but are now about finding ways to free up money for the general fund. One version of bond abuse is borrowing at ridiculous long-term rates to avoid short-term headaches through CABs — capital appreciation bonds. The more common version, though, is use of 30-year conventional bonds to pay for routine maintenance and educational equipment such as laptops and iPads.

CalWatchdog has written about these amoral assaults on taxpayers on several occasions. Anyone who pays attention quickly figures out what the Sacramento press corps never makes clear to Californians: Goal number one in the Legislature and in nearly all local school districts is accommodating veteran teachers, which means a constant push to free up enough funds in district operating budgets so that teachers can get the automatic “step” raises that they typically receive just for showing up for 15 of their first 20 years on the job.

All the other stuff we hear about education in budget fights? It’s all show. Democratic legislators beholden to the CTA and CFT know what they must do each budget season: Keep the auto raises coming to veteran teachers and stymie any reform that might discomfit them.

The latest example of K-12 chicanery

Understand this history, and it’s no surprise that federally funded school lunch programs are being looted as well to free up funds for teacher auto raises:

“At least eight California school districts have misappropriated millions of dollars in funding intended to pay for meals for low-income students — the biggest culprit being the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to a state Senate watchdog group.

“The California Department of Education has ordered districts to pay back nearly $170 million in misused funds to their student meal programs, the California Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes said Wednesday. L.A. Unified has been forced to pay back more than $158 million in misappropriations and unallowable charges that the district made over six years ending in 2011.

“State officials suspect the alleged misuse of funds could be more widespread across California school districts but the system is overburdened and has only a small team of investigators.”

I would bet anything that this “alleged misuse of funds” is far more widespread. The never-ending pressure to free up money in the general fund to pay for teachers’ auto raises is a constant up and down the Golden State. Whether that means deceiving the federal government, ripping off Sacramento, or lying to parents and students, so be it. It’s the California way.

A governor who wants to enable the abusers

The key subplot here, of course, is that Gov. Jerry Brown in recent days has again made clear he wants more local control of schools.

Yo, Jerry! Yo, gov! I have some questions!

Do you get out much?

Do you think that leopards change their spots?

Do you think local school boards are full of smart, tough advocates of students?

Yo, Jerry! Yo, gov! I have more questions!

Have you been awake for any sustained period over the last 30 years?

Do you understand how California schools operate, and to the benefit of whom?

Have you even heard of Mark Berndt?

Sheesh. If this is the smartest guy in California government, we are doomed.

By Chris Reed

The California media are finally beginning to figure out that school bonds are being abused, with money being borrowed on horrible terms or with funds being spent on things that school bonds historically have never been spent on.

But even on the best education blogs, there has been no attempt to connect the dots on why this abuse is happening. Instead, even the guy who’s arguably the Golden State’s best education reporter is simply out to sea. On the EdSource website, John Fensterwald had a long and well-reported piece on the relatively new phenomenon of 30-year bonds being used to buy laptops and iPads that will last at most a few years. It’s full of lots of interesting new details, such as the fact that the textbooks that laptops and IPads usually replace are specifically banned from being paid for with 30-year bond funds.

But then there is this:

Is it legal to buy personal computers for students using school construction bonds? And if it’s legal, is it wise to pay interest long-term on devices with a short shelf life?

Last month, the Bond Oversight Committee for  Los Angeles Unified balked at endorsing Superintendent John Deasy’s plan to buy tablet computers with bonds intended primarily for building and renovating schools. In doing so, the Committee raised questions that other school districts also should be asking.

There’s no unqualified answer to the questions that the Bond Oversight Committee asked, and school districts like San Diego Unified and Riverside Unified have come to opposite conclusions. What all agree on, however, is that the state needs to provide legal clarity and, most importantly, dollars.

It is absolutely not true, not in a million years, that all school districts want “legal clarity” on this. It’s much easier to balance budgets when you shift operating costs to capital budgets. School boards don’t want to be told it’s not an option.

Which brings us to the motive question: Why would school board members be eager to do such dubious things with borrowed funds? Because the most powerful force in most school districts is the local teachers union — which wants above all else to preserve the “step” and “column” pay practices that give automatic raises for years on the job and unearned raises for meaningless graduate coursework. The result is that compensation now routinely eats up 90 percent or more of many school districts’ operating budgets, which means school boards are always desperate to free up operating funds lest their schools become Potemkin villages.

This is not a whiny, minor, pedantic point. When journalists cover financial scandals in the private sector, they hunt for motives. So why on Earth when they cover financial scandals in the public sector would they act as if there were no impure motives? As if the scandals were created by the white-collar bureaucratic version of the Immaculate Conception?

I don’t know. I really don’t.

I won’t even get into the other little flaw in the EdSource analysis. Namely, that the use of 30-year bonds to pay for routine maintenance is probably even more of a financial cancer than buying iPads with such borrowing.