Throughout California, schools are scrambling to find money to help under-performing students meet federal and state educational standards. Getting the funds to help students in a given school year can determine whether a school district hits or misses its yearly progress goals. There are limited funds and no shortage of school districts that need them. That’s why the "grab and stash" actions of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), a district that already gets the lion’s share of many educational money pots, is particularly egregious.
According to the LA Daily News (July 5, 2007), "Over [the last] four years, [LAUSD)] filed claims for and received $46.6 million in state money under the Pupil Promotion and Retention Program." But, according to a recent state audit, only a fraction of that money was actually justified. Now, the State Controller’s Office says, 97.4 percent of those funds, $45.4 million, must be returned.
How could such a large portion of these claims be unjustified? The answer is simple- through LAUSD’s mismanagement and nonfeasance.
The district asked for reimbursement of costs that were not covered by the program and failed to provide required documentation even after it was asked for additional information.
The statewide Pupil Promotion and Retention mandate reimburses school districts for the costs to adopt and implement policies for promoting and retaining students between specified grade levels and to offer additional instruction, including summer school, to certain students. But, unfortunately, the success of the LAUSD version of this program has rested in the hands of the district’s disorganized administration, who apparently thought grabbing as much money as possible from these funds was one way to cover other district costs.
According to the LA Daily News, the school district got away with its exorbitant, fraudulent claims) for four years until "the Commission on State Mandates noticed that claims for reimbursement for [LAUSD] were far out of proportion to claims from other school districts around the state." When the State Controller’s Office initiated the audit in May 2006, the district had claims on file, but had not provided the documentation to support them as the district had promised for several years. Records from those years showed LAUSD admitted the district intended to file amendments to reduce claimed costs, but failed to do so. As a result, the district got a lot more money than the district was due for several years.
Eventually, "district officials presented copies of undated amendments that [the district said were] filed more than a year ago. These amended documents acknowledged that at least $39 million in claims should not have been filed." Apparently, LAUSD was playing a state funding version of "catch me if you can," claiming reimbursement for activities and services the district knew should not be funded through the program.
The State Controller said in an attachment to the report, "With a limited pool of resources available to our schools statewide, LAUSD took $45 million more than it was entitled. The State will reclaim the payments that shouldn’t have gone out, and we’ll continue working with the district to help [it] clean up [its] process."
As we all know, students get disciplined for failing to turn work in on time and can even fail if they falsely claim they couldn’t do it. No such punishment has happened to LAUSD’s management. Although the school district will be punished by having the over-payment siphoned off allocations the district gets this year, we have to wonder how many under-performing students in other parts of the state failed to get the help they needed due to nonfeasance of LAUSD’s management.
Shouldn’t the powers in the LAUSD who allowed such extensive fraudulent claims to be filed receive some sort of punishment? If they don’t, what’s to stop other districts from playing the grab and stash game with this and other educational funding in the hope that they will not be caught and will suffer few consequences even if they do.
This situation underscores the overwhelming need for better oversight of LAUSD, specifically, and of funding procedures for statewide education programs overall to make sure all students are given an equal chance to learn and tax dollars are not misused.
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