LAUSD’s Who-You-Know Won’t Do

The Los Angeles Unified School District does not have $6.3 million to throw around. Yet that appears to be just what the school board did last week when it awarded a $6.3-million adult literacy contract to a start-up company with little more to recommend it than a tie to state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles).

As it turns out, some board members said they thought that Reality Based Learning of California was the same company as Reality Based Learning of Redmond, Wash., a firm with an established record in elementary literacy. The company the board voted for is instead a different company that has a mailing address at the Los Angeles law office of J. Arnoldo Beltran, a Polanco ally.

The vote may not stand because during the school board meeting Polanco said he had spoken individually to board members. That prompted a lawyer for the district to raise the possibility of a violation of the state law governing public meetings and advise the board to postpone action. It didn’t, and now the LAUSD inspector general, Don Mullinax, has been asked to investigate. Good.

Supt. Roy Romer insists that the LAUSD has turned a corner and cites the thorough checks and balances added by the board to ensure that the Belmont Learning Complex is completed and operated safely at a reasonable cost. The board did not apply that same thoroughness before its vote on Polanco’s pitch.

Now members say they were misled and are likely to overturn the decision Tuesday. They shouldn’t have made it in the first place. Such shenanigans certainly do not shore up confidence that the district has broken from its bad old days of you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours.