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NO CINNAMON ROLL LEFT BEHIND

Dave WielengaWed. October 01
 

State finds LBUSD misspent funds intended for poor kids. So where’s the party for the whistle-blower?


PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

“I just love how they keep saying I don’t understand the law,” says Diana Bosetti, and if that seems a strange thing to love consider that these have been a couple of very strange years for the perky PTA mom. By now, she really can derive a perverse pleasure from being ignored, underestimated and marginalized by recognized experts in the complicated laws of public education. More than that, however, this is what truly lifts Bosetti’s spirits: “Every time I press forward,” she says, “I end up being right.”

But even in her vindication—now that she’s proven the Long Beach Unified School District, during two school years, misappropriated $87,722 of federal and state funds intended for low-income children at Los Cerritos Elementary School—Bosetti doesn’t exactly sound satisfied. She doesn’t think it should have taken so long, or that she should have had to drag her evidence all the way to the California Department of Education to finally get justice. She doesn’t like the way LBUSD officials—from the school principal to the district office to the school board—stonewalled and undermined her along the way.

And she still doesn’t know if the whole hellish hassle will change anything.

“I’m not at all sure they’re not going to continue doing more or less the same thing,” Bosetti says grimly.

LBUSD’s response to Bosetti’s crusade certainly doesn’t sound like the rumble of change.

Yes, it had already repaid $31,988.83 of the misappropriated money to Los Cerritos in the summer of 2007, after Bosetti pointed out the money was illegally spent to pay a school site administrator and to buy office furniture. But LBUSD official Bob Williams, who oversees the federal and state programs, called that a “good-faith” payment.

And a couple of weeks after the California Department of Education’s Sept. 15 ruling—announcing LBUSD had misappropriated another $55,733.17 in federal and state funds and ordering the district to pay it back—Williams still doesn’t believe the district did much wrong.

“The ruling was a matter of interpretation,” says Williams, whose title is director of special projects. “That’s the best way to say it.”

Actually, the ruling by state officials was very clear: LBUSD spent an illegally high percentage of the federal and state money on administrative costs—more than 60 percent on administrators, facilitators, office furniture and even cinnamon rolls at Los Cerritos Elementary, and as much as another 15 percent at the school district headquarters. The legal cap for all administrative expenditures is 15 percent, which is supposed to ensure that at least 85 percent of the funds are spent on direct services for poor children. That didn’t happen, and Bosetti’s eyes widen when she hears Williams’ “interpretation.”

“That’s a little scary,” she says.

Even scarier: There’s no way to know if the dollars diverted from Title I tutoring programs for about 100 poor children at Los Cerritos are just the tip of the iceberg at LBUSD—whether untold numbers of other poor children throughout the district’s 95 schools are also being deprived of educational services because of shifty accounting.

And here’s where this strange and scary story arrives at absolutely weird: You might think that Diana Bosetti is a hero. Might think that she’d get some headlines, an award, some pats on the back. That school district officials might have thanked her publicly—bent the microphone toward their mouths at a district meeting and said, wow, really, great work—for catching an error that might have mushroomed into something bigger than a nearly $120,000 misappropriation.

Nope. At the end of her two-year quest to track down the misused money and see it refunded, not very many people are happy with Diana Bosetti. In truth, they haven’t been happy with her from the get-go—not so much, they say, because of what Bosetti fought for, but because, they emphasize, of how she fought. As her battle wore on, Bosetti became increasingly demanding, strident, combative and relentless. She got angry.

“We don’t fault anybody who allows us to gain clarifications around certain practices. We’re very transparent that way,” says Williams. “We have lots of parents involved with the PTA, with school site councils, with budgets. But Ms. Bosetti was out of the ordinary. Let’s just say she threw a tremendous amount of effort into this. The way she did this is not typical.”

In short, if Bosetti was going to spend two years pointing out they were breaking the law, they really wish she would have been nicer about it.

People never seemed to have a problem with Bosetti’s energy before, and she’s always had a lot of it, going back to the years when she was a competitive figure skater and when she worked for local Republican Congressman Steve Horn in the early 1990s. Bosetti’s been involved in one thing or another at Los Cerritos Elementary—from serving as a room parent to the PTA president—since her son, now 10, was in kindergarten.

“I guess I kind of became a little more well-known when I helped raise $500 for the Aquarium of the Pacific through a bake sale,” allows Bosetti, who did that when she was first-grade room parent in 2004. “Remember the middle-school boys who went in the aquarium and killed the shark and the sting ray? It ended up we went down there with one of those big, giant checks and threw a party. KCET did a TV special on it. I think that brought my name a little more to the forefront. So when nominations came up for PTA, I was nominated for president—although I’ve got to say that’s one of those jobs very few people want because it’s such a difficult, time-consuming volunteer position.”

She says her tenure as president “was a good year. People felt welcome, we raised money and there was no drama, which is unusual for a PTA.” She chuckles. And then she was nominated for the school site council.

“I was pretty tired, but I thought school site council would be pretty quiet,” she reflects. “I noticed it only meets four times a year. I thought, ‘That’s pretty doable.’”

She laughs.

“Who knew, huh?”

THE NUMBERS CRUNCH
It is quite nice at Los Cerritos Elementary School, a campus amid the little hills—thus, its Spanish name—on the western edge of Bixby Knolls, at the very end of San Antonio Drive. Tradition is valued here, and has been for a long time. The original school bell, circa 1913, has been restored and mounted on a brick monolith out front. They did that way back in 1958.

The surrounding neighborhoods reflect their age, but in a graceful way. The large trees seem wealthy and wise. The grand houses, too. Their well-tended lawns and gardens ramble on, seemingly unaffected by issues so coarse as the price of land, alternately exuding the cluelessness of royalty and the bigger-picture awareness of Zen. There’s a green, shaded park across the street from Los Cerritos Elementary. All in all, it’s a cool place to go to school, even if—maybe especially if—you come from somewhere else, not nearly so nice.

Diana Bosetti lives around here with her husband and their two young boys, but in recent years, about 100 children have come to Los Cerritos from outside the area, from places less affluent. But those poorer kids have brought money with them—ironically and precisely because of their economic status. They have brought federal Title I funds and state funds, both of which are allocated on the basis of financial need.

Title I is the first chapter of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Its complete title—“Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged”—explains its purpose. Its first paragraph pledges “to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education.” Specifically, it charges the nation’s public school system with “meeting the educational needs of low-achieving children in our nation’s highest-poverty schools, limited English proficient children, migratory children, children with disabilities, Indian children, neglected or delinquent children and young children in need of reading assistance.”

In 2001, President George W. Bush brought major changes to Title I, pushing into law a set of reforms he called the No Child Left Behind Act. This plan has changed the emphasis of the federal government’s role in K-through-12 education. It increases the focus on reading and mathematics and it relies on standardized tests to measure student achievement. It intends to create what its authors call “accountability” by tying federal cash to children’s scores on those tests.

Some critics charge that Bush’s plan has backfired, that the emphasis on accountability has forced schools to teach little more than what’s on the standardized tests.

Whatever your opinion of the accountability demanded by Title I or its No Child Left Behind reforms in the classroom, there’s no question the programs require a lot of accounting—by teachers, school principals and district, state and federal administrators. From test scores to income records to time cards to paychecks to the allocation of local, state and federal tax dollars, it’s a gigantic and continuous numbers crunch.

To help manage all these statistics and money, and to ensure some local oversight—or at least familiarity—with them, each school forms a school site council like the one Bosetti joined at Los Cerritos. Each council is headed by the school principal and is composed of a small group of teachers and parents. Their job is to develop a Single Plan for Student Achievement across various categories of need and corresponding programs, including federal No Child Left Behind/Title I money and California state grant funds. They try to figure out what students need, then set goals and design strategies for improving the test scores of students in those programs who aren’t hitting state standards, and then propose how to spend federal and state money to get it done. When they finish, they send their plan to the school board, which considers their recommendation when it votes on each school’s budget. It’s a lot of work.

‘STONEWALLED & DECEIVED’
When Bosetti showed up for the Los Cerritos’ first school site council meeting of the 2006-2007 school year she was ready to handle the numbers. She’s a former reporter for the Long Beach Business Journal and Orange County Business Journal.

Actually, she was more than ready, and getting a little impatient.

“We didn’t meet until January of 2006, so we were already well into the school year,” Bosetti says. “Then, the first meeting lasted 15 minutes, at most. We were given a one-page Word document that showed a bunch of numbers. That was about it.”

Bosetti didn’t even look at the budget for about a week. When she did, however, it didn’t take her long—after all, the thing was only one page—to notice some potential problems.

“I immediately realized that a huge portion of the money went toward administrative costs—64 or 65 percent at our Los Cerritos school site, and I don’t know how much at the district offices, because the numbers weren’t included,” she says. “Being a finance writer, that was a red flag. Even private companies don’t allocate that much money toward administration. I took a second and asked, ‘What’s going on?’”

Some people didn’t think that was very nice.

“I’ve heard that a lot from the whole group of people who are not happy about the questions I’ve raised,” says Bosetti. “The Los Cerritos principal, Lauren Price, accused me of being a rabble-rouser. Some members of the committee complained I was taking up too much time and bogging them down with minutia.

“The problem is I never got satisfactory answers to my questions, and that’s why it has taken so long. I tried to raise questions at the school site council and got nowhere. School district officials contacted me, I asked them questions, and got nothing but documents that didn’t make sense when compared with the law. I would dig, find more issues, ask questions and get no answers again.”

Williams acknowledges that answers to Bosetti’s questions didn’t come as quickly and clearly as might have been optimal.

“There had been a change of leadership in this office,” he says. “I came to the job in the fall of 2006, and the previous year there hadn’t been a director.” Also, Price was in her first year as principal at Los Cerritos School. “We did not do a really good job of making sure everybody at the school site knew all the rules. It was one of those things where, when you’re in transition, some things don’t get taken care of the way they’re supposed to be taken care of.”

Williams underscores the district’s partial repayment of $31,988.83 when Bosetti identified misallocations of the federal and state funds.

“In good faith we said we would pay that part back,” he says. “But she went back to other years, and wanted that paid back as well.”

Bosetti says she understands how things can fall through the cracks during a change in command. “But I think we should remember that in this case they aren’t really ‘things,’” she says. “They are poor children.”

But Williams’ pleas today for a little bit of patience are contradicted by his repeated and documented assertions—and those of other LBUSD officials—that Los Cerritos was in complete compliance with all the funding rules and that Bosetti did not understand the procedures.

“I took every necessary step, did everything they told me to do,” says Bosetti, “and at each step I was stonewalled, deceived and given partial numbers. Still, I was right. And I’m a parent. If I know more than they do, what does that tell you? These issues are really not that difficult.

“They may not have liked how I did it, but how do you combat incoherent documentation and budgets that you never receive? With please and thank you?”

THE MEETING THAT WASN’T
Reading the minutes of the Los Cerritos Elementary school site council meetings during the two years of Bosetti’s membership is like perusing a psychological torture manual. Its pages simmer with the sticky heat of incessant and bitter resentment, which regularly gurgles up into episodes of obstinacy, strategic one-upmanship, overt power plays, in-your-face insults and barely veiled threats. Very uncomfortable.

And then there is the scene with the terrifying hallucination.

It occurs early in the text, during the second meeting convened by Los Cerritos principal Lauren Price in February 2007. Or is it the third meeting? See, that’s the unexplainable thing—it was a hallucination that no one actually had, but everyone experienced.

It happened—or didn’t—when members of the school site council gathered for, well, let’s just call it their next meeting. They were asked to approve the minutes of the January meeting which included the “fact” that they had voted to approve the minutes of the November meeting.

But there was no meeting in November; the council met for the first time in January. Yet, minutes from that non-existent November meeting did, in fact, exist. Somebody had written them. But who? And the January minutes insisted that everybody had approved the minutes of the November meeting. But again, who?

Bosetti asked those questions.

“Instantly, everything got hostile—instantly,” she recalls. “When I had questions about the minutes, everything went south from there.”

It’s still rather hard for Bosetti to figure out why anybody—Price or the meeting’s secretary, Trish Krug—might falsify minutes of a meeting that never took place, and she’s reluctant to ascribe a sinister motive.

“It could have been a combination of things,” Bosetti speculates. “Ms. Price was a new principal and in trying to figure out what to do, it could be she tried to cover up not being organized. But it was the first real sign for me that there was trouble. It let me know going to the principal for anything really important was pointless.”

Price declines to comment much on anything Bosetti has to say. “Everyone sees things differently,” Price says, “and everybody is entitled to have their own opinions.”

Eventually, the extra sets of minutes were explained as “a template error” by LBUSD. “I don’t know what that means,” says Bosetti. “I guess because I don’t know enough about computers.”

Bosetti knows tape recorders, though—reporters use them all the time at public meetings—and when disagreement erupted over school site council minutes, she brought one to the Sept. 26, 2007 meeting. That turned out weirdly, too, when some people complained and LBUSD official Williams responded with a letter that insinuated Bosetti could end up behind bars.

“If a person does tape record the meeting without the full understanding of the members, it is a violation of California Penal Code 632,” Williams wrote on Oct. 9, 2007, CC’ing his letter to district officials ranging from his assistant, Carol Pratt, up to Superintendent Chris Steinhauser. “This can be punished with a fine not exceeding $2,500, or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison, or both that fine and imprisonment.”

Williams denies he was referring to Bosetti.

“That letter wasn’t intended just for her, but for the whole school site council,” he insists.

Either way, Williams got the Penal Code wrong. It specifically does not apply to recording “a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive or administrative proceeding open to the public.”

The bright side is that at least Williams knows now. “We gained clarification on that,” he says.

‘YES, I HAVE NO QUESTIONS’
After all the fussin’ and fightin’ and investigatin’ and repayin’, clarity has not arrived at the Los Cerritos school site council. Even as the California Department of Education was investigating the misappropriation of funds in its budgets for the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years, the group was including many of the same questionable components in its budget for 2007-2008. None of Bosetti’s not-so-niceties made any difference.

In March, the school board approved the budget, and First District board member Mary Stanton—who represents Los Cerritos Elementary—made the motion to do so.

What’s Stanton’s opinion on the legal issues Bosetti has raised? She doesn’t have one—or didn’t when asked about it shortly after casting her approving vote.

“You really ought to talk to someone who is better able to explain the nuts and bolts of all that,” Stanton said in a telephone interview last April. “Someone within our district knows the policy. But I’m not that familiar with it. I know what it is, but I’m not familiar with the details.”

But again: Stanton voted to approve the budget, and she moved that the School Board approve it. Was she satisfied that it was correct and legal when she did that?

“Yes, I have no questions,” Stanton said. “Because Diana [Bosetti] had brought that up and it had been explained. But off the top of my head I can’t remember all the nuts and bolts. It has something to do with using staff back and forth. If I start explaining I’ll just get myself all messed up.”

Stanton did not respond to an interview request last week, after the state’s ruling.

MANNERS
It was sunny and breezy outside when the new school site council at Los Cerritos Elementary convened for their first meeting of the 2008-2009 school year. The mood was pretty upbeat inside the school’s quaint little library, too, where parents, teachers and principal Lauren Price gathered around tables they’d pushed together.

Diana Bosetti isn’t on the council, anymore, but she showed up, anyway, and everybody was congenial as she took her seat in the back, next to LBUSD assistant special projects director Carol Pratt.

The meeting seemed very well organized. Price distributed an 11-page packet—some of the papers printed on both sides—that featured the agenda, by-laws, various timetables. Also, the minutes from the last meeting, in April, which mentioned the disputes Bosetti had taken to the California Board of Education. But there weren’t any budgetary figures.

After an hour or so, just before the meeting was about to adjourn, Bosetti raised her hand and voice to interrupt.

“Has anybody seen the results of the audit?” she asked. “Has anybody seen the California Department of Education’s response to the complaint I filed? Would anybody like to see it?”

“I would not,” answered Price. “I have not seen the complaint, nor have I seen the response.”

“Have you seen it?” Bosetti asked, turning to Pratt.

“No, I have not seen it,” Pratt said. “That went to Mr. Williams.”

Bosetti appeared a little surprised, but the meeting adjourned amicably, and she left.

But it was rather surprising—that both Price and Pratt claimed not to have seen the results of an audit that would seem to bear so significantly on the school site council’s obligations this year.

“Oh, I know about the response to Diana’s complaint,” Pratt acknowledged privately a few moments later. “I’ve heard about it. But no, I haven’t actually seen it.”

Price sticks to her statement.

“Not having seen the documents,” she says, “it would be hard to make a comment on it.”

Both administrators, however, say they are looking forward to the new year.

“I think it’s going to be very productive,” says Price.

“This was a very mellow meeting today,” says Pratt, a former teacher, who is in her 30th year with LBUSD. “Last year was very unusual. I have never encountered a situation like that. It’s not so much what was done—it was just the manner in which it was done. That’s all I’ll say.”

EPILOGUE
Following the state’s validation of her complaint, Diana Bosetti has just written a letter to LBUSD official Bob Williams requesting that the school district review the 2007-2008 Los Cerritos school site council budget for similar problems. In this latest budget, she says, federal and state funds were misappropriated to the tune of about $52,606.

“I hope that the LBUSD will not find it necessary to force me to file another Uniform Complaint regarding this matter,” Bosetti writes in her letter to Williams, “given that this cumbersome process took over a year and included several pointless meetings with you and others from the school district.”

Williams confirmed he has received the letter. “I’ve prepared a response for her,” he says.

He won’t get specific, but it sounds as if everything is back where it started.

“We’re well within the law as far as what we can take out for administrative and indirect costs,” Williams says. “Ms. Bosetti may not understand how these things are calculated.”

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Viewing 30 Comments

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    DW: This is some top notch reporting! And Diana Bosetti certainly deserves the “Golden Monocle of Scrutiny” award in Government Accountability (if only there were such a thing)!!

    LBUSD does some things very well but other things very poorly. Being appropriately responsive to its constituents is among the things it does very poorly.

    Our youngest son attended an LBUSD Title-1 Middle School last year. When the School earned (sic) the dubious distinction of having failed to meet its mandatory Adequate Yearly Progress standards for the 6th consecutive year, my wife and I received our required notification under “No Child Left Behind”. We were advised that, because of the school’s failure, we had a legally-guaranteed option to send our son to any other Middle School in the District, at District expense. We were to rank three (3) alternative schools as options and were told that our son would be placed at the school we had ranked the highest and that had an opening.

    We’re still waiting for a response. Apparently they felt that they only have to send out the mandatory notices…not actually do anything about them once they were received. I guess it’s a good thing we resorted to enrolling our son in a private school for this year or, I suppose he would still be at home waiting to be placed.

    Bosetti’s story is very near to my heart since I did my own (admittedly amateur) analysis of the FY09 LBUSD Budget when trying to decide how I want to vote on Measure K (the $1.2 Billion bond measure for LBUSD Infrastructure). I learned that they cut 4% from the total budget for salary and benefits but they cut 44% from total budget for books and supplies.

    As a layperson I was able to identify many non-essential LBUSD programs that are enumerated in their budget that if cut by a mere 10% could save them $4.5 million right off the top. Critical funds that, if freed up, could translate into much needed books and supplies for our classrooms.

    I’d like to think "Golden Monacle" recipient, Diana Bosetti would be proud.
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    Good for you Ms. Bosetti. It’s not very nice to see the powers that be ignore or interpret laws as they see fit. Some would consider it fraud. It takes people like you, questioning and involving themselves, to make a difference. Rather than merely complaining, you actually take actions to improve the situation. I for one am thankful for your efforts.

    Dave W., wonderful article.
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    We are very fortunate to have Ms. Bosetti taking the extra effort and making the personal sacrifice to follow this through. Is there no punishment for misappropriating the funds beyond paying them back? If not, it will only continue. And who is auditing the LBUSD schools? This misallocation of state funds is just the type of thing we pay them to find!

    Excellent article Mr. Wielenga! I've only been reading The District for a few weeks now but I am impressed by the compelling, thorough, and unfiltered reporting here. I'm spreading the word!
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    My sentiments on both exactly. Shame on the LBUSD!

    The District is the first stop for this read-a-holic! Dave is damn talented (so are the others) and I'll never forget the article he wrote many years ago about his trucker-father in the IPT. It was really nice, a father and his son. Made me miss my Dad.
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    This sounds like a bunch of typical school administrators who have no idea what the law actually requires.
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    The District Weekly reported today that a really big tree is growing in Brazil.

    "It's huge!" exclaimed District Weekly correspondent Lak King Kontext. "It's really, really big! It's got to be worth 4,000 words, easy!"

    The District Weekly left unresolved the question of whether or not there were other trees around it, maybe even millions of other trees that, taken together, could be characterized as the largest rainforest on Earth.

    "I don't see any other trees," Kontext said. "Of course, I'm not looking for any other trees, either. How 'bout if I just imply that IF there are any other trees around here, they are all exactly like this tree. That will save me a lot of work. Did I mention how big this one tree is?"

    When asked if such an account would be an accurate and honest description of what could possibly be one of the largest, most diverse, dynamic and successful ecosystems on the planet, Kontext said, "Whoa, partner! Accuracy? Look — if I can't encourage readers to overgeneralize from one excruciatingly small and selectively described example, I don't have a story here. Unless I actually look around, that is. Which I haven't. Did I mention that the tree is perky?"
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    So I guess what the Seal Beach Review of Journalism is saying is that we should not question nor examine what LBUSD is doing with their(our) funds?
    How dare any of us "little" people question those in power!

    Or are you suggesting there is much more to the story...that this is just one tree of misappropriation in a forest of misappropriated funds? Because my guess is that is what is going on.

    My husband served on the site council at our school, and he said really all they did was rubber stamp the principal's requests. My guess is that this is what the district is used to and they probably are getting away with a lot of money manuevers by slipping stuff past school site councils.
    Kudos to Ms. Bosetti for actually doing the site council job the way it should be done. We should all follow her example and get more involved.
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    Clearly, SealBeach seems to have a problem with the sort of good solid investigative journalism that this article demonstrates. SealBeach would have us ignore individual 'trees' or, at the very least, not comment upon them, because, 'well gee...there are many such stories like this one out there, why are you just picking this one to report upon?"

    Strangely...some would say ironically...SealBeach seems to be missing the bigger picture: Each of these 'trees' is remarkable individually. In remarking upon them individually, journalists identify the unique differences between each, differences that, when considered collectively and over the longer term, begin to describe the various characters of the entire ‘forest’…dark and light…thin or dense…overgrown and rotted or well-managed and flourishing.

    Keep picking out the ‘trees’, DW. They’re all fair game in my book and I, for one, really enjoy reading about each of them!
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    Hi Seal Beach! Thanks for the feedback. While I agree that it would have been great to have finely combed the entire Long Beach Unified School District budget and those of each of its 95 school site councils, that was not possible. Hell, it took Diana Bosetti a couple of years to try to extract information from just one school site council. And as the story points out, while she was investigating the misappropriations in the last two budgets, the misappropriations seem to have continued in the subsequent budgets...so the auditing process would never be completed to the point that a story could be written and the problem revealed. What I hoped to accomplish with the story was to reveal that certain illegal budgeting philosophies had been incorporated at one school and that they were being defended by the administrators. Also, to suggest that this situation---the illegalities and their defense---might mean that these illegal practices are standard practice at the LBUSD. Of course, I don't know, and said so in the article---but does that seem reasonably possible to you? To use your metaphor of the trees, this kind of extrapolation is common; disease or infestation is found in one tree and a corrective action is applied to all the trees, just in case, to stop or prevent the problem in one tree from being passed to the entire forest. Journalism is not perfect, Seal Beach, and I certainly don't claim to be. I did my best on this story and think it stands up. It uncovers a problem, documents it and suggests that it might be a good idea if people look into it further to see how bad it is---and then do something about it. Those last two things are up to all of us, including you, unless you are just more comfortable believing its an isolated incident ... and resenting anybody who disturbs your blissful stupor.
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    I guess I will be the first to disagree with all the kudos being handed out. Maybe all of you should throw her a party...though her picture in the paper is probably the best gift you could have given her.
    There is so much back story on this topic it's going to difficult to keep it short. My children attend Los Cerritos and for the past couple of years I have been treated to watching Dianna and her little band of malcontents turn our school in to the Hatfields and McCoys. It seems like whenever Dianna gets her feelings hurt it ends up in the paper. She may not buy ink by the barrel, but she loves to call in those who do.

    It's ironic that she mentions drama and PTA, because her motivation may stem partly from feeling marginalized by a changing of the guard. That’s the subtext of how she joins the school site council after being PTA president. What is the Kissinger quote about school politics? "Academic fights are more brutal than our fights in the real world because the stakes are so low, so the passions are very high.” It appears that in her quest to stay relevant she has thrown herself under the bus.

    In past emails to anyone who will publish her, she states that she does not enjoy being “treated like a piranha” (I believe she meant pariah) at her children's school. But that she is doing this because it's the right thing to do, for the poor children. It is my understanding that Title 1 money is given to schools based on economic need, but it is actually spent based on achievement needs.

    Her characterization of fighting the good fight selflessly for the poor children might even be inaccurate. While she is not poor she may very well have a child that qualifies for Title 1 funded programming. Maybe that’s splitting hairs, but since this whole battle is about splitting hairs, it is a fair question. Aside from that, the image of our school taking opportunity away from "poor children" is a gross misrepresentation. I don't think you will find a more charming environment filled with daily opportunities than Los Cerritos. This depiction is an insult to the entire dedicated staff, which looks after EVERY child every day.

    I maintain you can do the right thing, without first doing the wrong thing - like calling secret meetings to gain the support of unwitting families. At first I laughed at the absurdity of the movement...then it became a disturbing tornado of hostility...pulling in everyone who had a gripe (remember we’re dealing with parents here) because this issue looked to have legs.
    She continues to work very hard for her 15 minutes…

    Okay, all that said, maybe Dianna is right, and then good for us getting cash right now during these tough economic times. But I firmly believe if she was on the principal’s side and the school's side and was truly doing this just for the children, it could have been handled differently. Did she get a hearing because of the articles in the paper and her fanning the flames of divisiveness at school? Was she able to follow up with the State Board of Education because of unsolicited emails to a large number of parents and shamelessly bagging on Mrs. Price? No, she got hearings because she filed a complaint. Which she has every right to do, but she did it slinging mud and throwing punches, and that makes for some tantalizing tidbits and press coverage.

    I am angry because this crusade for the greater good has had a palpable negative impact on my children without them even knowing it. The tension at school and the amount of time spent on this issue has to trickle down to the classroom and is detrimental to all the children; rich, poor, under-achieving, over-achieving, and of course everyone in the middle. We’ll just never know how much we could have accomplished by simply trying harder to understand that we all have the same goal. Or maybe we don’t? What is the real motivation for this crusade? Watching from the front row, I don’t think her aim is true.

    No good deed goes unpunished...and that applies to both Price and Bosetti. Another biting article to feed our need for gossip and juicy dinner table conversation. Dianna must be so proud.
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    anonymiss: You seem to take umbrage not so much at what Ms. Bosetti did, but how she went about doing it. Fair enough, but let me ask you this: given that it took nearly 2 years to actually get anything done about what was clearly demonstrated as blatant misallocation of Title 1 funds, do you truly feel that any other method would have been more successful? Suppose she had simply brought this issue to Ms. Price, received the same cursory and conciliatory acknowledgement that she initially did and then just let it drop. Do you truly believe that the situation would have been corrected?

    I’m finding that when dealing with government representatives at any level (and that’s precisely what public school administrators in public school systems are…government representatives) the best and quickest way to get things done is to play the squeaky wheel…and the louder and more annoying and repetitive the squeaks, the more effective they prove.

    As we see over and over again, at all levels, government is exceptionally good at spending our money but exceptionally bad at spending it wisely or as we intend that it be spent.

    In my opinion if we all were even half as attentive and insistent as Ms. Bosetti was, government at all levels would prove far more efficient and fiscally responsible. This would be so because more of us would understand, as Ms. Bosetti clearly does, that government (whether it takes the form of the local public school administrator or Congress itself) only has the authority we grant to it. Its power is our power and its money is our money. They must spend our money only as we direct and, when they do not, we must assure that this is corrected immediately if not sooner.

    Dr. Kissinger’s actual quote: “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small”, is at once on point and not. It’s pertinent in that Ms. Bosetti requested information and action of our various public school representatives but instead of receiving attentiveness and responsiveness, found herself mired in politics instead…sadly. But Dr. Kissinger’s quote is not pertinent because unlike the University politics upon which he was commenting, the stakes of properly educating our K-12 students could not possibly be higher.

    When our 20% of our LBUSD K-12 students are dropping out; when many of our LBUSD Title 1 schools are failing and have been for many years; when fewer and fewer of our Seniors can manage to pass an exit exam designed for 10th grade students, we need more and more people like Ms. Bosetti out there putting every single aspect of LBUSD under a very powerful microscope, finding every possible flaw and demanding that they be corrected.

    Our kids deserve nothing less than the best education we can provide for them. Right now, with a few notable exceptions, they just aren’t getting it.
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    Type your comment here.
    Dear anonymiss,

    It's not surprising that whoever wrote this rather personal attack doesn't have the courage to go on the record. If I was insulting someone's 7-year-old, I probably wouldn't either. For the record, my son is in speech and motor-skill therapy. But, I think it's rather sad that someone would find it appealing to bring up, even in vague terms, the challenges of a particular kid.

    As for the personal attacks against me? Well, that's nothing new (my car was even vandalized, as well as that of another school site council member), and frankly, it doesn't matter much. And yes, I have been marginalized by the PTA, as have countless others who at one time were very involved with the school. One only needs to look at the PTA membership numbers, and the fact that the PTA president before me has left the school entirely, to realize that. When I was PTA President, there were over 350 members. The following year, there were about 70 -- a trend that has continued. That sobering fact had nothing to do with me, but rather with the devoted followers of Mrs. Price, a group of about five women who have been rude to several families at Los Cerritos at every opportunity.

    Also, it's probably important to note that this same group created a document last year (called the Home School Compact), which attempted to prohibit parents from "gossiping about students, parents and personnel." On the surface, it's hard to argue against that. However, everyone was well aware that the true motive was to target families that were comparing notes about not only the Title I expenditures, but also the testing, or rather systematic non-testing, of kids of color for the GATE (gifted) program. In the end, the teacher's at Los Cerritos refused to distribute the Home - School Compact, until that ill-conceived portion was taken out.

    Not surprisingly, Principal Lauren Price was also very upset when a group of about 20 parents were made aware of the recent results of the TALB (teacher's union) survey -- a document that revealed that about 42% don't believe, or are unsure (21%), that the principal is a good match for Los Cerritos. Another 58% of the teachers responded that they don't believe they can express their views to Lauren Price without facing retaliation. Gee, I wonder why?

    Never does Principal Lauren Price, her followers, or others with the LBUSD, bother to dispute the numbers or facts. It's always about HOW the information gets out. This approach didn't work for Nixon or Kenneth Lay. What makes them think it will work at Los Cerritos Elementary? So please, stick to the facts (numbers), and keep my kid out of it.

    I stand behind my comments -- Diana Bosetti
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    John - I stand corrected on the quote, but I was really referring to the social politics where the stakes are low...I totally agree that elementary education is a number one priority. I agree that mistakes must be acknowledged and fixed. I agree that we need more programs to bring our kids up to speed, we need more field trips, more books, more enrichment, more PE, more nutritional and healthful food...What we do not need is to drag our administrators and staff through the mud and distract them from writing grants and running after-school tutoring programs. You can't get much done when every one has their hair up.

    I don't believe she needed to try and start a revolution to have her case heard. The district backed the principal, if in turns out that the State doesn't agree, then we have our answer. Good for us, but bad for us getting there. Ironically, Los Cerritos is not a Title 1 school any more. Not enough "poor kids" to bring in the big bucks so we can fight over how it's spent. No more reading specialist, no more math specialist and we'll see if Sacramento can even borrow any money to send back to the districts...so they can pay the schools.

    So no, I still do not agree with the method and unless you have kids at the school I don't think you can fully understand the price (no pun intended) that is still being paid. Great story, big win, but keep in mind somebody always pays?
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    Dear Ms. Bosetti-

    I guess it all depends on where you sit. From where I sit, you are hiding behind the numbers. From where you sit I am hiding behind a moniker. If I voice MY opinion it's personal. If you launch a 2 yr crusade it's a triumph and newsworthy. I get that it's newsworthy, I mean I do subscribe to Vanity Fair. Which I might just have to cancel.

    When referring to your child I was merely pointing out that no one knows who needs/gets or in this case doesn't get the Title 1 monies, it's confidential. Unless your kid is one who gets dragged out of class to work with the specialist. My kid does need the help, a fact (take a breath) I do not find insulting or embarrassing. My kid does not figure in to getting the money but does need access to the services they provide/ed. Stop looking out for me.

    So sorry I am not pumping my fists in the air. I just thought it was important that the actual under achieving kids and not just the image of the "poor kids" should be represented in this group hug for community activism. The past two years would have been better for us without this drama. What you have accomplished will have to be really stunning to make up for the damage you have caused. To people's lives, to people's careers, to your reputation and to the school reputation. I guess as a former reporter you had to shout your story from the rooftops and we're just roadkill.