LAUSD MAY LOSE MILLIONS AGAIN.

Byline: Greg Gittrich Staff Writer

A year after missing a crucial deadline for federal money to hook classrooms to the Internet, Los Angeles Unified officials admitted Thursday they fouled up again this year and risk losing $180 million in funding.

At a Proposition BB bond oversight committee meeting, technology division officials said the nation's second-largest school district simply has not hired enough employees to meet the December deadline despite seven months of work.

Further, the Los Angeles Unified School District has failed to budget money for the 18 percent match needed to win the federal grant to wire 170 schools for the Internet, said Jim Konantz, district director of instructional technology. LAUSD missed out on $60 million last year.

Board of Education President Genethia Hayes was outraged to learn of the foul-up.

``Who did the staff share these concerns with? Did anyone share this?'' Hayes asked.

``I find this extraordinary, especially if the same problems happened in the past. It is unconscionable to even begin to think the district would be operating like this. Checks and balances should have caught this.''

Hayes said the bureaucratic bungling reinforces the board's recent decision to force Superintendent Ruben Zacarias into an early retirement and hire Ramon C. Cortines to lead the district on an interim basis.

``Why would our staff not be able to handle this?'' she asked. ``And if the deadline is in December, why in God's name wouldn't we have time to get it done.''

At the Proposition BB meeting, Steve Soboroff, chairman of the bond oversight committee, repeatedly asked the district's technology supervisors to explain what they need to meet the December deadline for the federal E-Rate program.

``We don't want to take any chances. We want this to work. What do you need from us? What do you need from the Board of Education?'' Soboroff asked, only to pose the question over and over again before getting an answer.

Konantz finally replied, ``We need office staff.''

School board members David Tokofsky and Julie Korenstein urged Konantz to submit a budget request for emergency staff to the school board by today so it could be considered at Tuesday's board meeting.

Technology supervisors estimated the cost for the extra help would be about $200,000.

``So $200,000 for $180 million,'' Korenstein said, clearly exasperated that the board wasn't asked to approve the item earlier.

In order to meet the federal application requirements, the Proposition BB oversight committee unanimously approved a motion to put up money from the $2.4 billion Proposition BB bond measure to ensure the district has matching funds needed to receive the E-Rate funds.

While facilities personnel attempted repeatedly to reassure the oversight committee that the application deadline would be met, LAUSD technology officer George Beckwith described himself as the ``only full-time person doing E-Rate.''

``Last year we put together this package, and it didn't get through the bureaucracy,'' Beckwith warned, before expressing optimism that the recent appointment of Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller would help the district meet the deadline.

Only one-third of the district's campuses have applied for E-Rate funding during the first two years of the program, and there is no clear plan in place to improve the application process in order to ensure more schools obtain money to wire classrooms for computers, Tokofsky said.

This year, the E-Rate program will draw from a pool of $2.3 billion set aside by Congress to wire public schools and libraries. Schools awarded funding will receive money to install Internet connections for five computers in each classroom.

Faced with cost overruns related to wiring campuses, the LAUSD Facilities Division recently canceled or scaled back hundreds of safety and technology improvements that it promised to complete at schools during the next year with bond money.

The Proposition BB's safety and technology work is running about $200 million over budget, nearly the same amount of money the district is entitled to through the E-Rate program, Soboroff said.

``This would wipe out the entire cost overrun for the Proposition BB projects,'' he said.