School Auditor Offers Tips to Would-Be Districts

SYLMAR — Groups hoping to form successful independent school systems can look at the behemoth Los Angeles Unified School District for tips on what not to do, the district’s chief auditor said Wednesday.

Don Mullinax, who has issued several scathing reports in the past year, declined to give his opinion on school secession, but he called the L.A. Unified “totally dysfunctional.”

For decades, he said, administrators and staff members have “protected turf, avoided accountability and resisted change.”

The former Department of Defense and Senate investigator spoke to about 35 business leaders, educators and political aides during the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.’s education committee meeting at Mission College.

Mullinax said a school district’s success depends on having a strategic plan to detect and prevent fraud. He said such a plan should include goals, employee training, updated technology and oversight with “clear, accountable lines drawn.”

While investigating the environmentally plagued Belmont Learning Complex, a half-completed, $200-million high school near downtown Los Angeles, Mullinax and his staff members interviewed more than 65 witnesses, none of whom could say who was in charge of the project. The nation’s costliest high school also lacked a budget, he added.

To avoid getting into similar situations, school districts have to make business as high a priority as academic achievement, he said.

“You can’t have one without the other,” said Mullinax, who began working for the district a year ago and reports to the seven-member Los Angeles Board of Education. Mullinax said he is optimistic on the plan put forward by Ramon C. Cortines--who next week becomes the interim superintendent--to divide the 711,000-student system into 11 sub-districts, three of which would be in the San Fernando Valley.