Plenty of Blame to Go Around : But somehow the L.A. Board of Education managed to escape any of it--how’s that?

The budget news is bad and getting worse for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Robert Booker, the chief financial officer, has warned the school board to expect another huge deficit--this time of $258 million--for the next fiscal year. Maybe this time, a majority of the board will listen.

Veteran financial officer Booker warned against approving an 8% pay raise for teachers and dipping into the reserves--leaving little room to compensate for state cutbacks or a drop in lottery revenues.

As a matter of fact, on at least eight occasions in the past three years, Booker has cautioned the board about spending money the district doesn’t have. But the school board routinely disregarded his advice.

In spite of his caution, Booker and his financial team are now asked to take the lion’s share of the blame for failing to project a surprisingly large midyear budget deficit, an additional Chief Financial Officer Robert Booker $130-million gap discovered after the board had made more than $275 million in cuts.

Los Angeles Schools Superintendent Bill Anton has suspended himself, Booker and other senior employers for the embarrassing gap, which outside auditors have blamed in part on miscalculations and miscommunications. Anton has also issued letters of reprimand to managerial employees who share responsibility in the financial area.

Booker and his managers should be held accountable, but they don’t deserve all of the blame. The deficit points also to school board members who voted their politics rather than yield to the grim fiscal realities from Sacramento.

The scary financial picture should force the Los Angeles School Board to work better with Sacramento to tackle the daunting problems of public-education finance. In the meantime, the board can no longer afford to spend--or promise--money that isn’t there. The board has to figure out how to make sure that schools are properly funded and run under tough fiscal constraints. That’s what the board--not bureaucrats--were elected to do and, ultimately, responsibility rests with elected officials.