Apodaca: Variety of school scandals all victimize students

Newport-Mesa residents may be wondering if there’s something inherently different about our school district that makes it prone to scandal. It sometimes seems as if we roll from one mishap to another without pause — from controversies over student cheating to a former administrator’s recent accusations of improper government reporting.

But the reality, sadly, is that the NMUSD scandal-o-meter reading is not much different than that of many other districts. Indeed, when it comes to allegations of bad behavior and mismanagement, it is downright ordinary.

NMUSD’s latest fracas involves former director of human resources, John Caldecott, who contends that some salaries and retirement benefits may have been improperly inflated in reports to the state teachers retirement agency. He was fired in January after he sought a court order requesting public disclosure of relevant documents. A judicial decision on the matter is pending.

NMUSD has plenty of scandal-plagued company. Across the country, school-related misconduct cases have rocked local communities. In Atlanta, 11 educators were recently convicted of racketeering and other crimes for giving students answers to standardized test questions and holding “cheating parties” to correct wrong answers. Another 21 school workers had previously reached plea agreements. According to a state investigation, 44 schools and nearly 180 employees were complicit in the scheme.

And let’s not forget Los Angeles Unified. The nation’s second-largest school district is seemingly a never-ending source of sordid allegations.

Last year, for example, LAUSD paid out an astonishing $139 million to settle legal claims against an elementary school teacher who committed horrific acts of sexual abuse. District employees were accused of ignoring reports for many years about the teacher’s conduct.

More recently, LAUSD was visited by the FBI, which seized district documents as part of a federal investigation into the bidding process for the botched plan to give iPads to every student. The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched its own informal inquiry into whether bond funds were illegally used for the iPads.

And we think we’ve got problems.

There’s another big school scandal not far from home that’s worth our notice. A total of 18 employees at three San Diego County school systems — Sweetwater Union High School, San Ysidro School District and Southwestern College — have been charged with participating in “pay to play” schemes.

One of them, the former San Ysidro superintendent, was sentenced to two months in federal custody and a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty to demanding a contractor donate to three school board candidates that he supported. In exchange, the contractor was to receive favorable treatment when bidding for school building jobs.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) responded to that scandal with a bill that would have banned school superintendents and other top administrators from raising campaign funds for board members who oversee them.

But Gov. Jerry Brown returned the bill to the assembly without his signature, stating that he was “not inclined to establish a separate set of rules that apply to one class of school employees.”

Misconduct in education isn’t exclusively an American problem either.

For instance, reports have surfaced in other countries about widespread cheating on standardized tests. Last fall, the College Board said it was withholding the SAT scores of all Chinese and South Korean students who took the test on Oct. 11 pending “an administrative review.” Some scores of foreign students who took the test in January were also withheld for a “potential security violation.”

Those investigations are occurring against a backdrop of widely circulated stories in those and other countries related to academic fraud. They include reports of fake transcripts and reference letters submitted by college applicants, hired test takers, and even the deployment of people to sit at SAT exams in earlier time zones so questions can be sent to those taking the test later. Parents and school officials have been accused of looking the other way, possibly even encouraging such practices.

It would be easy to see these alleged instances of cheating, influence-peddling and gaming the system as disconnected from our troubles here in Newport-Mesa — easy, but wrong.

There are many common themes at play: The intensifying pressure on students and schools to produce high test scores; suspected ethical and professional lapses by administrators; school boards that are sometimes viewed as too chummy with the employees they oversee, and far too much education money spent on lawyers.

But here’s the most important factor these scandals have in common: The biggest losers are the students.

Consider the words of the Fulton County Superior Court judge when handing down surprisingly harsh sentences for eight of the Atlanta educators who were convicted but had refused offers of leniency if they admitted guilt, apologized and waived their right to appeal.

“I think there were hundreds and thousands of kids who were lost in the schools,” Judge Jerry Baxter replied to a defense attorney who objected to the jail terms. “That’s what gets lost. Everyone’s crying, but this is not a victimless crime that occurred in this city.”

Whatever the outcome of the latest NMUSD scandal, let it at least give district leaders pause. Every decision made and action taken, whether legally justified or not, should not be influenced by self-interest but must be wholly in service of the one goal that defines the school system’s very existence: Giving students a quality education.

Anything less is not merely a scandal. It’s a tragedy.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.