Los Angeles Unified School District is no stranger to controversy, underscored by the recent Los Angeles Times article revealing that the district paid $200 million more in salaries than it had budgeted. To make matters worse, this is not the first payroll mess involving the nation's second-largest school district. Several years ago, thousands of employees were over- or underpaid because of problems with a new payroll system.
According to the Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2010, The Los Angeles school district paid $200 million more in salaries than it budgeted last year even as it laid off 2,000 teachers and hundreds of other employees, according to an internal audit.
Auditors so far have unearthed no wrongdoing, but officials are puzzled, concerned and perhaps even a little embarrassed.
The issue came to light as a result of “an audit, completed in December, on the arcane subject of ‘position control.’
“It looked at how well the Los Angeles Unified School District keeps track of salaried positions.
“Not well,’ concluded auditors working for the district’s inspector general.
“The system is broken,’ said Inspector General Jerry Thornton.
“We really don’t have adequate position control and we don’t know where our funding comes from for all these positions,’ Thornton said.
“Last year, the district listed 76,860 full-time positions, which were supposed to cost $4.7 billion. Instead, the district spent $4.9 billion.
“Auditors have yet to identify where the bulk of the difference came from or to whom it went.
“In some cases, unfunded or expired positions remained on the payroll. In others, jobs that persisted on the payroll turned out to be vacant. Problems turned up with about 3,000 positions.”
At a time when unemployment is near an all time high-a whopping 12.4 percent--it is disgraceful that 2,000 teachers and hundreds of other employees lose their jobs while the district spent $2 million in salaries that were unbudgeted. How many students could have benefited from those extra funds?
There needs to be a top-to-bottom review of the system. Questions needs to be asked: Who decided to put the system in use? Why weren’t high-tech features not installed properly? Someone was paid to do a job, and it was not properly done. The district wastes far too much money and expects taxpayers to foot the bill. If the district is serious about meaningful reform and eliminating wasteful spending, they must hold people accountable.
Bottom line: Lessons learned, lessons forgotten: students and taxpayers lose.
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