Group Warns of Potential Textbook Loss

The Los Angeles Unified School District is distributing thousands of textbooks to students without any viable method of assuring it will get the books back, according to an outside report obtained by The Times on Thursday.

The report--based on an eight-month review of 151 schools conducted by the nonprofit California Community Foundation--warns that unless the district corrects serious flaws in its inventory system, it could eventually lose track of tens of thousands of textbooks purchased this year with an emergency infusion of $25 million.

“We believe that it may be accurately said that LAUSD has lost control of its own book inventory system,” the 83-page report said, “due to the antiquated nature of the system itself and to inadequate resources--financial and otherwise--at the district, cluster and school site levels.”

“The district must address these problems,” the report concluded, “or the substantial amount of money appropriated by the district or raised through private sources to fill holes in the book supply will turn out to have been wasted through ineffective--even nonexistent--inventory control, tracking and distribution systems.”

Jack Shakely, the president of the foundation, was even more blunt in an interview.

“You can put as many books out there as you want, but what good is it if you can’t find them? It’s throwing books down a black hole,” he said. “This isn’t a story about good guys and bad guys. It’s a story about not enough money or strategic planning--and kids getting nailed.”

Los Angeles school officials, however, complained that the report, titled “No Bang for Our Books,” overstates the problem and all but ignores Supt. Ruben Zacarias’ quick response to the district’s textbook shortage when it was revealed by The Times last summer.

Zacarias organized the emergency textbook fund--which included $500,000 raised by the California Community Foundation--to enable every student in the district to have a textbook to take home as of July.

“That was an incredible undertaking and it deserves recognition,” said Robert Collins, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment.

“Is our system seriously flawed? Absolutely not. Was there a monumental effort to make sure every student had a textbook to take home? You bet. Hey, if you don’t have books, you have nothing to inventory.”

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District officials concede that, although some of their 661 campuses have established computerized textbook monitoring systems, a majority of schools still rely on two small white cards filled out by school personnel. These cards, along with crude, handwritten numbers scrawled on books, are all that’s available to determine if a student turns in assigned texts at the end of the year, according to the foundation report.

Compounding problems, the district in 1991 closed a central textbook warehouse as a cost-cutting measure, but failed to replace it with an alternative. As a result, textbook storerooms at many schools across the 700-square-mile district still contain copies of outdated and obsolete books.

At one middle school, investigators for the foundation reported finding books such as “The Story of the Negro,” “The Negro in American Life,” and “Our Oriental Americans” in storage.

Those books, however, are not being used by students, district officials said.

Nevertheless, Leslie Pollner, who was among a dozen researchers who helped the foundation gather information--on funding, accountability, enforcement of book returns, inventory tracking, personnel and technology--was stunned when she discovered those books gathering dust in the storeroom of the south Los Angeles school.

“I felt like crying. I didn’t think 40-year-old books like these still existed,” she said in an interview. “Officials at the school said they haven’t had time to clear them out. In fact, they don’t even have a procedure to remove them or a place to put them.”

Collins, the district’s curriculum director, did not argue with that.

“We’ll be picking up the surplus books districtwide this year. But right now, there’s no mechanism in place to do that,” he said. “I can assure you that those books aren’t being used.”

The district and the foundation agree on one thing: the need for state government to increase textbook funds to local school districts.

The state provides only about $17 per student for books. This year, concerned about the shortage, Zacarias supplemented that figure with about $13 per student from district coffers.

The foundation report, though, emphasizes that many problems are not tied to state funding and could be addressed with relatively inexpensive technology, trained personnel and common sense.

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“Gee whiz, people in Arkansas can instantly learn how many Madonna CDs were sold yesterday in a Los Angeles Wal-Mart store,” Shakely said. “Why can’t L.A. Unified get some simple bar coding and inventory controls?”

Some schools are not waiting for the district to act. The report pointed out “pockets of success,” including Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda and John Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley.

“They were among a small number of schools that found ways to provide textbooks for their students,” said foundation spokesman Allan Parachini. “They are good scroungers and optimistic schools that proved it can be done even under adverse conditions. The district could learn a lot by studying how they did it.”

To hear Grover Cleveland High School Principal Eileen Banta tell it, “we shouldn’t be singled out for praise. We just have an excellent administrative team, a great assistant principal in charge of textbooks, and we hustle.”

No sooner did Zacarias make the textbook shortage a priority last summer than “we assessed our needs, filled out forms and borrowed $75,000 against our school resources allocations over the next five years,” Banta said.

At the same time, the school that otherwise views an overhead projector as advanced technology managed to install--within budget--a computerized book-monitoring system modeled after one found at a medical magnet school in East Los Angeles.

“I know my colleagues are doing similar things at other schools,” Banta said. “The problem is that the district does not do a good job of putting its best foot forward.”

Zacarias would not go that far.

“We guaranteed that every kid would have a textbook by July, and by God, we did it,” he said. “But I don’t discount the foundation’s finding of a need for an improved inventory control system.

“A lot of our problems happened as a result of drastic budget cuts needed in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,” Zacarias said. “Now, with an improved fiscal situation, we can start addressing those problems. And we welcome the foundation’s collaboration.”

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Proposals for Better Book Tracking

A report by the California Community Foundation makes 22 recommendations for improving the textbook inventory system in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It suggests:

* Immediate state government action to increase the allocation of textbook funds to local school districts, with funding at the level of $75 per student per year.

* Districtwide implementation of an online book inventory control system accessible at all schools via a World Wide Web site. It would use automated bar coding or other systems so books could be accounted for throughout the school system.

* A waiver provision in any deposit-fee system so poor families would not have to post deposits.

* A system designed to hold schools, families and students accountable for responsible use and return of books and instructional materials.

* Book warehousing facilities that could take advantage of the economies of scale of a centralized system while allowing local autonomy in decisions about instructional philosophy and approach.

* A full-time textbook clerk at each senior high school and middle school who is also an expert in instructional technology. Each elementary school would have a full-time librarian whose duties would include responsibility for book supplies and instructional technology.