Voracious (albeit slow) reader that I tend to be, I recently read an interesting story on the District Weekly written by Long Beach resident and LBUSD parent Ms. Diana Bosetti concerning conditions in the Long Beach Unified School District. The story, entitled: “After School Special” can be viewed here. I urge my readers to read this article in its entirety.
Publicly funded entities like LBUSD sometimes play fast and loose with the various taxpayer subsidies they receive. This is known and it is clearly documented. To date, with a few notable exceptions like Ms. Bosetti, this truth has been at best ignored and at worst tacitly accepted – even approved of – by the people in the various jurisdictions these publicly funded entities are intended to serve.
Make no mistake; when the sort of fiscal malfeasance that Ms. Bosetti describes in her story occurs in a School District like LBUSD, we all suffer.
o Federal, State and Local taxpayers suffer because the hard earned funds they provide (through their taxes) to support public School Districts like LBUSD are squandered
o Communities suffer because the overall quality of education suffers (as clearly evidenced by the number of failing Title 1 schools and the horrific drop-out rates in our District)
o District parents suffer because their children are not receiving the quality education that their elected representatives have assured them they would receive. A quality education which our tax dollars pay for and which School Districts are rightly expected to deliver
And, worst of all and most importantly,
o District students suffer, because the overall quality of their education suffers because it is, in many cases, usurped and de-prioritized where it matters most, in the classroom, in favor of the sorts of “conferences” and “training programs” and “team building sessions” like those enumerated in Ms. Bosetti’s article
Conferences, training programs and team building sessions can be very important to any organization, including LBUSD, but they can also be used as excuses for largesse. When LBUSD contracts with an expensive facility or resort to host a training program or team building session or conference that could just as easily be held in a local venue at far less cost, the School District is misusing… it is squandering… our tax dollars.
We elect a Board of Directors to manage our School District. They, in turn, appoint others to assist them in that duty but at the end of the day it is they, our elected representatives on the School Board that must be held not only accountable but also responsible for any and all misspending of *any* public funds under their control.
Being referred, as Ms. Bosetti was during her research, to “someone on staff” for an answer to her questions is not an acceptable response from any of our elected School Board members, not ever, and certainly not from Board President Jon Meyer, who should be leading by example in this area. Had Mr. Meyer remembered to whom he is answerable, a more appropriate response would have been something like:
“I’ll look into this right away and have someone get back to you by the end of the day or tomorrow at the very latest. If this does not occur, please let me know immediately afterward so that I may re-clarify my direction on this matter to District Staff”
The offering, by Board V.P. Mary Stanton that there is a need to take such events out of the city so as to assure that participating employees don’t “go AWOL and sneak home” is, in my opinion, blatant excuse making and equally not acceptable. The answer to such a challenge is not to sequester reluctant participants somewhere in Palm Springs or Lake Arrowhead – at substantially increased taxpayer expense – but to plainly and simply hold these participants *accountable* for their attendance and active and constructive participation.
Ms. Stanton, here’s a respectfully-submitted suggestion on how to deal with AWOL-prone employees:
“This program is your job assignment for the day/week. You are personally responsible for attending the entire program and for actively and constructively participating in all aspects of it. A failure to attend any portion of this program without advance approval by the program coordinator, or a failure to actively and constructively participate in every aspect of this program while you are present, will result in a commensurate forfeiture of your wages and disciplinary action will quickly follow”.
Ms. Stanton, please feel free to borrow this simple and direct admonishment and to employ it, and enforce it, at every opportunity.
For outstanding, tenacious and ongoing scrutiny of our elected Board of Education, the officials they appoint and the quality education they are mandated to provide, this months “Golden Monocle of Scrutiny” goes to Ms. Diana Bosetti, Long Beach resident and LBUSD Parent.
Brava, Ms. Bosetti, Brava! You are a fine example for all of us.
Big Picture Time
My friends, we live in a Constitutional Republic, though an ever-increasing number of us seem to forget this.
Unlike millions of people elsewhere in the world, we, in the U.S., in California and in Long Beach are – thankfully and blessedly – a self-governed people: It is within we, the People, as represented by the electorate, that ultimate power and authority over our government and all aspects of it reside.
Through our tax dollars, we fund our Federal, State and Local Governments and their various programs and services, including public education and we then freely elect representatives, like School Board members, for example, to manage those funds for us and to assure that our tax dollars are spent well and efficiently and that we are following applicable law.
We are currently spending more on public education than we ever have before and in return we are seeing (with a very few notable exceptions) the public education we are funding decreasing in quality on an almost daily basis. Today the average High School senior can’t pass a test that average middle school students in the 40’s and 50’s would have had no trouble with whatsoever.
The social and societal reasons for this general dumbing-down of American public education are, indeed, many and varied – eroded expectations chief among them – but another important causal factor is that we permit some in public education to squander the millions and millions of tax dollars we entrust to them.
When we fail to hold our elected public officials, including our School Board, fully accountable to us; when we fail to set high standards for their performance and then fail to visit reasonable consequences upon them when they or the officials they appoint fail to meet the standards we set; when we grant them our personal and collective treasure in the form of taxes that they, in turn, squander…when we permit all or any of these conditions to exist, as I believe they have and do in Long Beach, then we… each of us… squander our God-granted liberty.
We must stop squandering our liberty, my friends. If this great nation is to survive and to thrive, we…must…stop.
I very much welcome your questions and your comments.