DISTRICT OF DESPAIR LAUSD MINIDISTRICTS SERVE BUREAUCRATS, NOT SCHOOLS.

Byline: JANE ROBISON

I swear, LAUSD administrators must have plaques on their walls with the mantra, ``Put kids first, and you're fired,'' followed by, ``It's not your money, spend it freely.''

It's the only plausible explanation of the unwavering, self-perpetuating Dynasty of Denial. No matter how many superintendents come and go or what board members are ousted in favor of so-called reformers, the LAUSD culture will faithfully protect and serve itself and prevent money from ever reaching needy children.

That's my theory, and I'm sticking with it after taking my own personal field trip to see how the decentralization into minidistricts, each headed by its own local superintendent, was going.

First, I walked the hallowed halls of a couple of high schools in District B, the largest of the 11 districts serving more than 77,000 students in the east and northeast San Fernando Valley.

The district encompasses one of the Valley's neediest areas and poorest communities, including Sylmar, San Fernando, Sun Valley and North Hollywood.

In Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, for example, the school's 3,700 students get to watch the paint peel and fall off as they walk under outside awnings on a year-round basis.

The school is devoid of most grass and plants because the plumbing's kaput. Last week, the air conditioning was on the fritz, and students and faculty were frying.

And if Mayor Richard Riordan ever drove by, he'd probably have the entire campus demolished as part of his new revitalization plan to raze buildings that are eyesores.

It's that bad.

The North Hollywood High School a few miles to the south is in better shape physically on the outside. But there's no doubt when going inside that the school was built in 1927. For example, visitors won't find computers in classrooms, but they'll find them gathering dust in the storeroom.

Students have been waiting three years for Proposition BB bond money to trickle down to their campus so that the school can be rewired and the computers that are now antiquated can be installed.

Three years, no money, just excuses. A million of them on why a system they created and rules they wrote don't allow them to meet the needs of students and schools ASAP.

But when it came to finding office space for hundreds of administrators and bureaucrats booted out of the ivory tower door and sent to the boondocks in Region B, LAUSD flunkies took no prisoners.

In the flash of an eye, they secured space and paid premium prices to outfit this minidistrict in style.

And what a fine job they did, making sure to outfit the minimart districts in Nordstrom quality.

In District B, local Superintendent Judy Burton will be holed up on the second floor in a suite of offices in the new, visually stunning Academy of Television Arts and Sciences complex at Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards, far removed from the heart of poverty and need.

In fact, it's so far removed it's in the southernmost portion of the district as close as possible to downtown without actually leaving the area.

Cost: a $540,000 annual lease plus $55,000 for parking, bringing the grand total, just for office space, to $595,000 a year. That could buy a gallon or two of paint.

With a lovely fountain out front, a Starbucks on the corner and the North Hollywood Red Line stop just a couple of blocks away, the academy couldn't be a better spot to hatch dramas and subplots for improving the district's image without improving education.

And inside those offices, bureaucrats will plop their pampered little butts behind beautiful mahogany desks and on rich leather chairs, purchased as appropriate decor for public servants when Ruben Zacarias was superintendent.

Obviously, the district didn't want to lease RVs and drive them from school to school to bring administrators closer to students. What would they do with all that lovely office furniture?

While leasing costs for District B top the list in the Valley, costs to rent space for District A, which covers the Northwest Valley, including Northridge, aren't far behind.

Local Superintendent Deborah Leidner will go to work along with up to 125 staffers and other administrators in offices that will cost $495,000 a year to lease.

And in what can only be considered an oversight or horrible mistake, new District C Superintendent Robert Collins will be going to work in offices in Van Nuys that are already owned by the district.

Super Superintendent Roy Romer promised that the district's $39 million reorganization effort would bring administrators closer to families.

He never promised the district would siphon money from princes, the administrators, to pay for paupers, the children who have been locked for decades in the district's educational dungeon of despair.

Oh, the pain, the pain of trying to teach 750,000 kids on a measly $8.9 billion budget.

Choices must be made.

Tough, soul-searching choices. Do you go with mahogany or walnut for the executive desks for administrators making $136,000 a year?

People pound the Los Angeles Unified School District for being uncaring bureaucrats incapable of doing anything right.

That's so unfair.

Nobody takes care of bureaucrats better than the LAUSD.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) The marquee deteriorates outside Polytechnic High.

(2 -- color) LAUSD minidistrict offices are in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences complex.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News