EDITORIAL : MORE STUPID EXCUSES; LAUSD OFFICIALS DREAM UP YET ANOTHER REASON FOR BUNGLING THEIR JOBS: LACK OF STAFF.

PARENTS and students, here's another intriguing story from the people who brought you the ``Mess Files.''

Given the opportunity to obtain $60 million in federal grants last year to pay for Internet hook-ups in classrooms, Los Angeles Unified School District officials apparently sat around, scratched their heads, thought about it and in the end decided it was too much work for them to fill out the application forms.

Mind you, no one was held accountable for this foul-up. That's the way it always is among LAUSD's bungling bureaucrats who have spent their careers ensconced in a culture of lying and passing the buck.

Given the opportunity to apply for $180 million in federal grants this year for the same purpose, district officials have - how shall we say this? - sat on their duffs and hoped no one would realize that the deadline to do so is in a few weeks.

Well, Steve Soboroff, chairman of the Proposition BB Citizens Oversight Committee, noticed.

And at last week's committee meeting he asked questions. Many of them, by the way, had to be repeated because the answers he was receiving were as usual: dissembling and deceiving.

By failing to apply for the federal funds, the Division of Instructional Technology has set back the learning curve of thousands of students by forcing the Facilities Division to reduce the number of safety and technology improvements that would come from wiring the campuses.

The bungling also has forced the Proposition BB safety and technology work to run $200 million over budget. Coincidentally, that deficit would have been covered if the district had applied for and received the federal money this year and last.

This type of gross mismanagement would cost managers their jobs in the private sector.

But at Los Angeles Unified, where promotions to buddies are handed out like mints at dinners, such ineffectiveness is rewarded with lucrative contract buyouts.

Superintendent Ruben Zacarias gets $750,000 to walk away to salve his pride for failing. General Counsel Richard Mason and Chief Administrative Officer David Koch are paid through June for their roles in approving construction of Belmont Learning Center. Their buyouts cost the district about $400,000.

That's about $1.15 million not spent in the classrooms.

So now to solve the Internet funding fiasco before the December deadline, the technology division said it needs more workers to help them fill out the forms. And how much will that cost? Would you believe $200,000?

Obviously, that's peanuts in the minds of LAUSD officials who traditionally just take it out of the budget for classroom textbooks.

For years, we've chronicled the ineptitude of LAUSD's management and how it has cost the children who seek better lives through public education.

This one probably started in the CAO's office when the decision was made not to fund staffers for the department. It goes on and on down the line until some overburdened employee has to make the disastrous call against seeking the funding.

It's a pathetic way to run a $7.4 billion public business.

And it's got to end.

Some people have asked why this newspaper so often highlights so many of the bungled efforts at LAUSD. The answer is simple: We're stunned that the incompetence continues. We think the students deserve better, and we suspect you feel the same way.

So we're not about to let up until the district shapes up.

We expect the new school board and new leadership to prove they are intent at reform and will deal with those responsible for this latest fiasco in the only way that's appropriate: Give them a box to carry their personal items from their desks to their cars.