No Fraud Found in L.A. Schools’ Video Project

An attorney hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District to investigate a costly video project has concluded that there was no fraud or violation of contracting rules, but that the $750,000 production suffered from lack of oversight and the failure to establish a chain of command.

After interviewing about 20 people involved with the production, attorney David Eisen said he concluded that the district made mistakes in assuming responsibility for the project. The videos focused on adolescent health issues.

The Times reported last month that a district panel that reviewed the videos found them unfit for instructional use. As a result of that judgment, plans to broadcast the videos on the district’s television station were scrapped.

Despite that rejection, Eisen said there was no basis to the “notion that the videotapes were intended primarily for use by the district and that they were of no use whatsoever to children.”

Eisen said the videos are now being marketed by a Kentucky educational firm that has found 139 buyers, including cities, states, school districts and police departments.

“This suggests that the project was not entirely devoid of quality,” Eisen said.

The video series was funded through a complicated arrangement that involved the school district, Congress, the National Guard and a youth center in Compton that was built by the National Football League and United Way of Los Angeles.

Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles) helped the district obtain $30 million from the U.S. National Guard for programs such as math/science labs and camps for troubled youths. However, at the request of Herb Carter, then president of United Way, Dixon earmarked $500,000 of that money to produce the series for the youth center.

Eisen said the district therefore was not responsible for the video funds, even though it paid all the bills for the project.

Instead of blaming the district, those who find fault with the arrangement should “question Congress and question why money is being allocated to a youth center in Compton without external quality control,” he said in an interview.

Eisen said his interviews established that a second allocation a year later of $250,000 to the producers of the video was approved by officials of the National Guard, not the district.

There was no evidence that the district lobbied for the funds, he said.

However, he conceded that district officials voluntarily asserted responsibility over the second year’s funds by attempting to establish a schedule for delivery of the series. He concluded that they failed to gain control of the process.

“No clear hierarchy was created and no one assumed responsibility,” Eisen reported.

He added that the district from the start should have obtained clear instructions on what oversight was required.

Eisen’s conclusions in part contradict several district records, including a contract that names the district’s television station, KLCS, as co-producer of the videos and gives the station exclusive broadcast rights to them.

The contract also provides for the district to help market the videos and receive half of the proceeds.

Eisen said the contract should not be viewed as the controlling document because the money was appropriated directly by Congress to the youth center.

Nonetheless, in a district memo summarizing the National Guard program, then-Associate Supt. Ronald Prescott described the $500,000 as an “allocation to KLCS for the development of a media-based AIDS program” that would be “under the direction of (KLCS manager) Patricia Marshall, with the involvement of the National Football League and the United Way.”

Eisen said the memo did not reflect the facts.

“What we know in retrospect is that it was not the district’s money,” he said.