SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Every time there is a ballot measure for school choice, the education establishment screams that if we allow choice, the public will fall victim to quacks and fast-buck artists. Only the current guardians of the status quo, voters are told, can provide accountability. But in reality, it is when we do not have choice that the public falls victim to fast-buck artists, as shown by San Francisco.

Since 1988, the city has raised $337 million, more than a quarter billion, through four bond and tax measures. This money, San Franciscans were told, was to fix aging schools and build new ones. But when some long awaited projects had not been finished, or in some cases not even started, parents were told that there was no money.

Local school bosses spent about $100 million on other projects, including non-teaching salaries, travel, and equipment. One facilities manager was getting $1,000 per day and squads of cronies were feeding at the trough. Money from new bond issues was used to pay for work called for by previous measures. Several officials are now under indictment, but others have fled.

These include superintendents Ramon Cortines, now running schools in New York, and Waldemar “Bill” Rojas, currently holding forth in Dallas. Mr. Rojas is the man who, when finally pressed, conceded that bond money had been used to pay salaries.

“Projects exceeded their budgets, yes,” he said. “Because something costs more doesn’t mean mismanagement. Did we tell voters every minutiae, every detail of what we were doing? No.” Besides, he confessed, “I don’t mind overspending if you have planned other resources and have them close at hand.”

The San Francisco School Board claimed it didn’t know what was going on and proved incapable of stopping the massive fraud. When she learned of the facts, Delaine Eastin, California’s superintendent of education, told reporters that “this is a grave injustice against the children of San Francisco.” But Eastin and her Department of Education, supposedly the guardians of educational quality and accountability in California, proved incapable of preventing any of the injustice. Similarly ineffective was John Mockler, executive director of the State Board of Education, which makes sense because he is an embodiment of the system. In the legislature, Mockler wrote much of the state’s education code, and then as a lobbyist he represented key players in the education industry. Then he conveniently crossed the table again to his current position. What a cozy and highly profitable world for a select few.

San Francisco is a microcosm of the entire government education monopoly--a rigid, corrupt, and outdated system that transfers billions in tax dollars directly to a bureaucracy, which decides how and where to spend the money. This monopoly spends much of its time explaining failure and demanding more money. They have received the funds, but they have not delivered. There has to be a better way.

Only when the dollars follow the scholars, as they do in higher education, rather than the dictates of self-interested and reactionary bureaucrats, will any meaningful change come about. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s current superintendent, Arlene Ackerman, illustrates the unreformable nature of the system.

Her solution to the massive waste, greed, and fraud? Another shakedown of voters through yet another bond measure. If voters approve it, they will deserve all the waste and corruption they will get.

K. Lloyd Billingsley is editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He can be
reached via email at klbillingsley@pacificresearch.org.