Alleged Misuse of Education Funds Comes Under Scrutiny : Inquiry: Grand jury investigates allegations that money for troubled youths in court schools is being used to hire office help and administrators.

The Ventura County grand jury is investigating allegations that tax dollars earmarked to educate and rehabilitate youths in the county’s corrections system and in a school for troubled youths are instead being used to pad administrative budgets in the county superintendent of schools office.

Grand jury members have visited McBride School three times in the past month to look into claims brought by Paul White, a teacher at the school, and Robert Le Vine, a former teacher. The school is located in a wing of classrooms at Juvenile Hall in Ventura.

Officials are also investigating similar claims in classrooms at Colston Youth Center and at the Juvenile Work Release Center, two other youth detention facilities in Ventura, and at Gateway Community School, a Camarillo school that educates juveniles on probation, truants, teen-age mothers and expelled students.

The allegations have also sparked inquiries by the state Department of Education, the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Ventura County district attorney’s office.

Charles Weis, county superintendent of schools, said he has ordered his own internal investigation into practices at the schools, which educate 600 students.

Weis defended Gateway, McBride and the two other court schools as well-run programs but said there may be room for improvement.

“If there is any truth to any of these allegations, corrections will be made,” he said.

White and Le Vine have listed a host of problems at McBride, where youths locked up for criminal offenses are housed and educated. Chief among them are allegations that county officials fail to offer mandated drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs for needy youths and adequate schooling for inmates, particularly for Spanish-speakers.

Money that should be used to pay for those programs is instead used to hire unneeded administrators and clerical help in the court schools, White and Le Vine have alleged in various documents presented to the County Board of Education in recent weeks.

Le Vine said funds are also diverted to pad budgets at Gateway Community School, which he described as the pet project of Phillip B. Gore, director of court and community schools. Gateway educates students who have been expelled from their home school districts.

Gore denied there has been any misuse of funds at McBride or Gateway. But because of the seriousness of the charges, Gore said, “we feel the appropriate response is to investigate.”

Gore declined to comment further on the teachers’ actions, saying he will wait for the outcome of the probes. But Weis said he believes White and Le Vine have pushed their calls for investigation because they are both “extremely impatient” people.

“They think once they state something, it should be done the next day,” Weis said. “But this is a human organization and these things take time.”

Le Vine was hired in 1991 by White, who was then principal of the juvenile court schools, Weis said. Within three months, White was demoted from principal to a teacher at McBride, a position he still holds today, Weis said.

Le Vine said he began asking supervisors last year to add another teacher to a high-security unit of four classrooms at McBride that house the county’s most violent juvenile offenders. Le Vine said he was the sole teacher there, and that it was difficult to instruct 45 youths in four separate areas.

He said he was told there was not enough money to give the youths more than what was being provided. Shortly after he threatened to take the matter up with the state Department of Education, Le Vine said, he was told to go home.

His supervisor, McBride Principal Dale Strayhorn, advised him to stay home until he received a doctor’s note stating he was emotionally fit to return to his job, Le Vine said.

He refused to see a doctor as a matter of principle, Le Vine said. In February, he was fired for abandoning his job. Since then, Le Vine has made at least two presentations to the County Board of Education, outlining what he says are misuses of funds at the court schools.

White publicly joined Le Vine’s campaign last month, writing a letter to trustees and addressing them at their monthly meeting. White said he requested a one-year leave last summer because the situation at the court schools and Gateway “has become intolerable.”

“It is an atmosphere where employees are kept silent by threats they will lose their job if they speak up,” White said.

He decided to speak up anyway, White said, because he was troubled by what he called an “outrageous” denial of services to youths incarcerated at Juvenile Hall and those attending school at Gateway.

Besides offering inadequate programs to treat drug and alcohol addictions, the court schools provide little in the way of bilingual programs for Spanish-speaking students, White said.

And the court schools make no effort to reach youthful offenders in their own communities by offering such things as satellite campuses, parent education seminars or outdoor physical education programs.

Under Gore’s direction, the court and community schools have “become a very, very comfortable workplace for adults, where kids are just the fuel to keep the lights on.”