I cannot believe some readers’ ranting and hissing about Diana Bosetti, the parent whose actions against the Long Beach Unified School District’s (LBUSD) deceptive misuse of Title I funds at Los Cerritos School were the subject of the District Weekly’s story, “No Cinnamon Roll Left Behind.” These arrogant supporters of bad government are lame.

There is no reason to be nice to any organization that refuses to comply with the state’s sunshine laws.  And if LBUSD officials are willing to lie about how they spend a small amount of money at one grade school, it stands to reason that their spending priorities and decision-making often do not reflect those of the parents and families they are supposed to serve as public servants. Historically, the LBUSD has instead faithfully served the tenets of its superintendent—deflecting with anger and arrogance anyone who challenges its secretive and insulated practices. Bosetti is right to challenge these bullies.

Here’s some history:

LBUSD, one of the largest urban school districts in the country, for a long time was refusing to televise or even record the audio of its meetings.  Finally, in just the past couple of years, the meetings have been televised. Parents would now be well served to advocate for the digital streaming of its meetings, the way the City of Long Beach does—thanks to an awesome city clerk, Larry Herrera.

The LBUSD board of education has been largely insulated from real press oversight because no news outlet regularly covers its meetings and decision-making in depth. It took the drunk-driving controversy involving board member David Ellis to get the press interested in what happens at meetings. The crazy thing is that for many years no local press—save Bill Pearl’s LBreport.com—advocated for LBUSD to televise its meetings.

This type of thing goes on continually in Long Beach.

More history: Several years ago, when the city tried to ramrod a Costco-sized 911 Emergency Center onto Stearns Champions Park, it secretly took park and school land—claiming the decision was made, not only by a committee that didn’t exist (and therefore never met to discuss the 911 issue), but by a committee ruled defunct some 10 years prior. The school district acted as an accomplice to a land grab where the environmental impact report had never been publicly released and building was proposed atop a liquefaction zone. The school district even met secretly to discuss potential school sites—and attempted to redact ALL the potential school sites from public view when I made a public information request.

When the school district was attempting to purchase the Java Bowling Lanes as a potential school site, it never disclosed publicly that then-3rd district council member Frank Colonna was a realtor involved the transaction. For that matter, Colonna rarely disclosed his potential real estate conflicts-of-interest while serving on the council. If any of you are ever bored, just take a trip down to the court house and review the past lawsuits involving Colonna and his real estate transactions.

Anyway, I digress. LBUSD dragged its feet in responding to public information requests, and in one of the most egregious practices I’ve ever seen, regularly conducted its meetings by putting basically everything on the consent calendar. Board members became agitated by parents who came to ask questions and didn’t come to cheerlead.

Even when current 2^nd district city council member Suja Lowenthal was on the school board she never was able to make good on her promise to get the board meetings televised.  Proponents for open government would show up at the meetings (at her request) to support this effort and she’d ignore the public—too afraid to buck the dictatorial (and thankfully gone) superintendent Carl Cohn.

In another alarming incident, it was discovered that LBUSD was wrongfully being charged Utility Users Tax—but refused to comply with public records requests to determine just exactly how much LBUSD had overpaid. When I wrote a ballot argument against the increase, City Attorney Bob Shannon threatened to sue me—stating that some of the information I included about the overpayment was incorrect. But both the city and the LBUSD refused to provide the correct information—just like the city has never supplied the items I requested about the Queen Mary.  See a pattern here?

By and large, the LBUSD—like the City of Long Beach—is a secretive organization, and unabashedly vengeful when taxpayers and concerned parents ask for any kind of information that would give any sunshine to their financial accounting or fiduciary responsibilities.

I say, go get ‘em, Diane—and good for you for keeping them honest.

To LBUSD whiners, I say—honesty and openness are the best public policy. If you have a problem with taxpayers demanding accountability, there is something wrong with you.

As for being nice when it takes a year or more to get public information, I say—that’s way over-rated. Being a bitch is what gets the answers, which is really too bad.

TRACI WILSON-KLEEKAMP IS THE FORMER LONG BEACH RESIDENT WHOSE PERSISTENT INVESTIGATION BROUGHT TO LIGHT IRREGULARITIES INVOLVING THE CITY’S RENTAL AGREEMENT WITH SUBSEQUENTLY-DISGRACED QUEEN MARY LEASEHOLDER JOE PREVRATIL. SHE NOW LIVES IN COLUMBIA, MO.

Tags: bad government, Carl Cohn, City Attorney Robert Shannon, diana bosetti, Long Beach City Hall, Long Beach Unified School District, Los Cerritos School, No Cinnamon Roll Left Behind, suja lowenthal, Traci Wilson-Kleekamp