THE TGIF SPECIAL BY....

We hear a lot about how our schools are suffering from a lack of money. It's always money, money, money...give us more money or we'll have to cut sports, music, field trips, pencils, paper...and even use old textbooks that say "someday, we'll send a man to the moon."

That's pretty scary stuff and should make a person wonder what happened to all that money schools were guaranteed following the successful passage of the proposition that guaranteed forty percent of this state's budget for education. That's forty percent right off the top. Has there ever been an audit? I don't think so. Should there be? Absolutely!

It took some investigative reporting to discover that in the Los Angeles Unified School District alone...it pays almost ten million dollars a year to about 178 teachers and staff who are forbidden to do ANY work; those subject to discipline, but whose cumbersome due process and appeals take years to carry out.

Here's an example as reported in the Los Angeles Times. One teacher, Matthew Kim, fired by the school board back in 2002 for allegedly sexually harassing students and colleagues still receives his 68 thousand bucks a year, including benefits, and (by union contract interpretation) cannot be called on to perform clerical or other non-professional duties during the appeals process.

Ten million dollars a year in that one school district alone. It would be interesting to find out just how many other school districts in California are paying certain teachers to NOT WORK!

Will there ever be an audit of California's school system? Will the public ever find out where the money goes...and to whom...and for what? I wouldn't bet on it.