A Currency Named Trust : Newport-Mesa embezzlement scandal threatens to cost the schools much more than money

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s huge financial scandal couldn’t come at a worse time for public education. The shaky finances of public schools in California already are being haggled over in a contentious climate. Now comes this disaster and its daily-mounting tally of the missing millions. It’s being called the largest fraud ever against any school system in the state.

No financial nightmare for the public schools comes at a good moment, but this one seems especially ill-timed given the enormous financial pressures on education. In Los Angeles, for example, there’s a bitter dispute over whether the school district is really playing straight with the numbers in its dealings with teachers.

What are teachers, parents and administrators to think in looking at a scandal like Newport-Mesa’s, in which the district’s former chief fiscal officer is accused of embezzling $3 million? Something like this inevitably fosters cynicism about public school districts at a time when they are trying to scrape for money to pay teachers a decent salary.

Skepticism already has found a loud voice in the beleaguered Orange County district. Parents and teachers there have not been at all shy in recent weeks about pointing out the recent teacher layoffs, the overloaded classes and the short supply of textbooks and other materials. Other interested parties in Southern California’s public schools surely are taking notes.

The lawyer for the accused, Stephen A. Wagner, says his client is cooperating with authorities and wants to make restitution. But if there is any consolation in that late gesture, there must also be a recognition of how much faith with public schools is broken in a case like this, both within a district and beyond its borders.

And the Newport-Mesa administration’s effort to distance the scandal from the district’s recent cutbacks has been utterly unconvincing. One administrator had the temerity to suggest it was easy to divert $500,000 here or there when a budget totaled $90 million. Isn’t that reassuring?

Ultimately, the buck should stop at the top. It is hard to see how a district with Newport-Mesa’s grave accounting and credibility problems can keep asking for sacrifices without also making a change in the office of district Supt. John W. Nicoll.

But beyond the obvious lesson of this scandal--beware even one bad apple in the counting house--is a larger moral tale about the trusteeship of our public schools. Even if we can recover some pilfered funds, it may not be such an easy thing to recover lost confidence. Our schools can survive and flourish--as they must--only if trust prevails over cynicism, day in and day out.