Pressure Mounts for Board to React to Report on Belmont

Calls arose Wednesday for the Los Angeles Board of Education to respond quickly to Tuesday’s scathing investigative report recommending severe discipline for several top school district managers and restructuring of their duties.

But there was no consensus on what that action should be.

Long-standing critics of the Los Angeles Unified School District hailed the recommendations and pressed the board to relieve those named in the report on the environmentally plagued Belmont Learning Complex.

“I think they need to set a course to immediately remove the people who are responsible for this disaster and hire new people,” said Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), who has pounded the district for the past two years with a series of legislative investigations. “They’ve got to clean house, and now is the time. They should have done it years ago.”

Fearing district paralysis if key leaders are removed, others recommended various methods of interim management, from appointing a crisis czar to having the board step into the executive role.

“I think the board has to take charge of the district by being a full-time board every day until they get a new core of staff in whom they have trust that there is a new vision,” said state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), another district critic.

The board is meeting in closed session today to continue its review of the report by top auditor Don Mullinax. Board President Genethia Hayes on Tuesday promised swift action, but gave no clue what it might be.

Hayes said Wednesday she anticipated announcing one action after the meeting, but did not elaborate.

The Mullinax report, presented to the board and the public Tuesday, blamed the district’s senior business staff for allowing construction of the downtown high school to begin without adequate environmental protections.

Explosive methane and other toxic substances have been found on the site in such concentrations to require costly mitigation for the life of the school. A board-appointed commission has been charged with recommending whether to continue the project.

The auditor’s investigation, launched after a Times article in February, characterized the staff as being underqualified and mired in “turf rivalry and internal bickering that undermined performance and professionalism.”

It named nine individuals including General Counsel Richard K. Mason and Chief Administrative Officer David Koch.

As a result of that criticism, several observers said the nine employees cited as meriting discipline should immediately be removed from their positions.

“I do know the people who have been identified as having committed various errors or omissions should not be handling any district matters,” said Jesus Quinonez, attorney for the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles.

Quinonez said it is common practice in such circumstances to remove employees from service with or without pay pending a resolution.

The vacuum that would be created by such action, however, could further jeopardize the district’s already imperiled program to find land and draw up plans to build 100 schools. District staff has launched into a frenzied race to complete that task before nearly $1 billion in state bond funds dries up next July.

On Wednesday, the committee that oversees $2.4 billion in local school bond funds urged the board to immediately hire an outside consultant to take over the district’s facilities division. Mullinax and other school officials endorsed the proposal.

“All were very much afraid paralysis could cripple the district’s ability to follow through on the actions necessary to find this extra money for the school facilities,” said David Abel, a member of the Proposition BB oversight committee.

The person would “just have authority from board and superintendent, to carry on necessary activities and to help manage the district through this crisis,” Abel said.

Wildman said he could support that idea, but others reacted coolly.

“The district is mired in consultants,” said Barry Groveman, attorney for the district’s environmental safety team, which raised red flags about the Belmont project. “One of the problems with consultants is that they don’t own the schools. What has been missing is accountability and ownership.”

Hayden said he is concerned that the Mullinax report will be used by those who seek to cast out the district’s old guard, but replace it with new leadership on the business model that will seek to avoid environmental regulations, just as the current bureaucracy has.

“Are we replacing one gang with another?” he asked.