Howard Blume reports in the LA Times that at least $2 million in computers cannot be accounted for.
“More than $2 million worth of Los Angeles Unified computers, mostly iPads, could not be accounted for during a recent audit by the school system’s inspector general.
“The review also found that the school district lacked an effective tracking system — and that losses could be higher as a result.
“The District did not have a complete, adequate and centralized inventory record of all of its computers,” the report said. “There was an increased potential for fraud, misuse and abuse of District resources.”
“L.A. Unified spent about $67 million from July 2011 through June 2013 to purchase 70,000 computers and mobile devices from Apple and Arey Jones, a vendor.
“The totals in the audit are estimates because, the report said, “we were unable to determine the exact number of computers and mobile devices purchased through the master contracts for the period under review because the information needed was incomplete, inaccurate, or unavailable.”
“The audit found campuses that had a surplus of devices and schools with no effective system to track who had a computer or who was responsible for it.
“In one case, the charter school division said it transferred 30 laptops and three desktops from one closed campus to another school. But the second one said it never received anything.
“And 106 computers from a closed occupational center could not be located, the report said.
“At Dymally Senior High, “current and former administrators refused to take responsibility for missing computer devices,” the report said.
“Eighty-two computers disappeared from a regional district office.
“Where records did exist, they were often incorrect, showing computers assigned to employees who had resigned, retired or transferred, the audit found.
“For the most part, the missing devices covered by the audit did not include iPads that were part of last fall’s rollout of a $1-billion effort to provide a computer to every student, teacher and campus administrator.
“However, 96 devices included in that effort also were lost or stolen, with 36 eventually recovered.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is outrageous! Where is the accountability? Do they have an inventory control system? Who is in charge? All they do is spend money. They should give every child an old fashioned notebook and call it a day.
LikeLike
NJ Teacher: it is painfully ironic—we get all the pain, they get the ironic gain—that the self-styled “education reformers” that see nothing but numerical data points instead of living breathing human beings—
Can’t keep track of the numbers. Can’t count. Hence, no ac-count-ability.
But it makes perfect ₵ent¢ when the only metric that ‘counts’ is $tudent $ucce$$.
But then, as Dr. Raj Chetty of Vergara trial fame might point out re the human psychological tendency to focus on outliers: could this be the ‘Michael Jordan’ of the ‘no account’ “no excuses” charterite/privatizer movement?
And he should know: he can do magic with LAUSD “large data sets” to fit the wishes of LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy—at least until the numbers&stats are 28 years old, because POOF! they disappear when they’re 30.
Go figure. It all adds up.
Rheeally! In a Johnsonally sort of way…
😎
LikeLike
Maybe Chetty could wave his Big Data Wand over a map of LA to find out what happened to the missing iPads.
You know, whether they have had good careers, made lots of money and spawned lots of little iPads or whether they ended up in a ditch somewhere. He could see if the teachers who owned the IPads before they disappeared had any impact on the iPads’ futures and work that into the teacher VAMs somehow.
LikeLike
What a surprise
Maybe they should look in the LAUSD skeleton closet, where all the important unethical and/or criminal activities are kept.
Word has it that skeletons like to surf the web and watch reruns of Night of the Living Dead.
LikeLike
The skeletons are the veteran teachers they purged to save money on pensions and pay, each teachers they get rud of saves them at least 1/2 a million. When a teacher dies– and they are dropping like flies from stress and suicide–we suspect Deasy does a happy dance on their paupers’ graves. The district keeps ignoring requests for the data on teachers separating from LAUSD. The union whines they do not have the stats, which seems unlikely since fired teachers, displaced and RiFed teachers go to UTLA when this happens. The new president had a lot of nerve parroting he excuses of the last .
He should be out there talking to teachers , seeing what they’re up against, but like the last clown he doesn’t see teachers and schools as the priority. ACP is all about the sound byte and attacking Deasy. He is so ready to strike he reminds me of Deasy, gonna do what he wants without abiding protocol and let everyone else suffer the fall out.
Zombie culture, casino capitalists. Skelly Tons .
LikeLike
It sounds like some people found ways to supplement their income. I guess technology does help one’s career!
LikeLike
Maybe LAUSD should just forgo the steps where they buy and then “lose track of”* IPads and just randomly hand out hundred dollar bills at the school doors every day instead.
If nothing else, I bet absenteeism would go down.
*many iPads have a built in GPS and can be tracked/located if they have the appropriate software enabled, by the way
LikeLike
No one should think this is limited to lausd. Technology, particularly iPads, are easy targets. The problem is compounded by districts not having the will or resources to track devices. Imagine if textbooks cost $1000 each and were in great demand.
What is totally not acceptable is that administrators refuse to take responsibility.
LikeLike
No doubt, “that administrators refuse to take responsibility”. This problem infects curriculum, instructional, staffing, building and infrastructure. . But, my lord, in the LAUSD we are not referring to short’ money”: sixty seven million dollars represents an astonishing amount of administrative financial irresponsibility, malfeasance, or just plain thievery. The evidence is public. It is out there in plain site for all to see. If heads do not roll over this issue, then the LAUSD is beyond redemption. Suffer the children. Suffer the tax payers and shme on what remains of the Los Angeles middle class community for idly standing by while the public coffers are emptied.
LikeLike
$67M is about my school district’s entire annual budget.
LikeLike
It’s one of the many issues brought up by teachers and completely ignored with the iPad fiasco. Our school (which has not been part of the rollout) does have an inventory, but that’s only because we put it in place after we had some computers stolen one weekend and we realized we didn’t have serial numbers for the police report. So the district spends millions on iPads and attendance systems that don’t work and consultants eating donuts downtown, but it is up to our computer teacher, who has one period off to be tech coordinator, to do the inventory, make sure all the teachers have a computer for attendance, keep them all updated, oversee 4 labs, oh, and shall I mention the weeks she spent making sure that we were ready for Smarter Balanced last year?
LikeLike
There’s no doubt in my mind that the real work in education is being done at the local level. You are the second tech coordinator who told me about the demands put on you without extra com pension. Also in LAUSD, with the MSIS debacle, counselors and teachers are working extra hours to attempt to enroll students and their schedules for school while the tech expert, hired by the district,sits with her 280,000 contract. The low man on the totem pole never gets the credit but the blame.
LikeLike
Paula and other colleagues…
Most of you know that I, as a lifetime public policy educator, have been writing here for almost two years, about LAUSD and Deasy, and Broad, and their merry band of scammers and scimmers.
Our dedicated group of local fearless muckrakers, such as Educator and Geronimo and Linda Johnson and Kim and Rene and Karen, and others, some of whom post their comments here, have researched carefully and continue to inform the media and our local and state legislators, and continue to press for all this info to be brought out in public and not remain secrets hidden in the mind numbing opaque intrigue of Deasy and his cohorts .
You will remember the recent push Deasy made to get rid of the outspoken member of the Construction Bond Oversight Committee, Stuart Magruder, which got as far as taking away his appointment. It was only the major public outcry at the loss of the one member of that raped Consruction Bond to pay for Deasy’s billion dollar iPad collusion, that saved Magruder…and by extension, the public’s right to know.
It is also only with the recent advent of our mass media, including the LA Times and KPCC public print media (and now with the emerging TV coverage) who have done their homework as investigative jounalists, that some of the slime that oozes from LAUSD is available for all. Now hopefully, LA parents and community members will gather together and fight for a new beginning in both educating all of the public schools students, not only throwing money at the charters, and screaming for transparent accountability.
I would hope that they also look into the Food Service side of LAUSD for more stories as to the waste and potential exposure of theft and fraud…all on the dime of the taxpayers of LA County. This is another hidden LAUSD arena for possible, and reported, corruption.
Everyone asks how this inept John Deasy, still the #1 highly paid lead executive of this district, has let all this vast expenditure of public funding without oversight, go on for the past 3 1/2 years. Deasy is the sole point person for LAUSD and the buck stops with him. That is the operant question, and am waiting with you all for the answer.
If anyone wants to reach me privately, here is my email address.
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
LikeLike
That us a** backwards too, as the top down stuff is based on the idea that they are in charge. They make the big$$$ so they need to own up to they errors. Deasy refuses to concede there was a problem with the roll out, his deal with Apple and Pearson or the whole teacher jail thing. Then there is marimonte…. Grrrrrrr
LikeLike
What gets me is how easy it is to make an iPad theft resistant. They all have a find my iPad app that is free. If the unit is nearby it will likely be found. The GPS can also trace them down and they could be numbered to keep pawn shops from accepting them or better yet reporting them. You can even shut them down remotely. It is hard to understand how Apple would not advise the district if these issues. More than the gadget, the safety if kids carrying them home is out into jeopardy. Child endangerment is okay for them…let some teacher hold science fair and a kid makes a gun that shoots marshmallows and he better watch out.
LikeLike
It’s been about a year and half since I was in charge of tracking our iPads. Maybe Apple has improved their theft resistant devices, but at first the cops were telling us about how the thieves were jailbreaking the devices. Then they mentioned something else that I don’t remember the name of. The basic message was that theft was rampant and very easy to accomplish.
And, yes, you’re right: I’m sure there were plenty of these stolen iPads in LA that hadn’t been set up with passwords and, so, could easily have been stolen.
Honestly, I’m blown away that Deasy is still on the job.
LikeLike
You can bet however that the vendors, Apple et. al., kept perfect records of their profits.
LikeLike
It’s a feature, not a bug. How many hundreds of billions have we “lost” in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s a systematic process of transferring government assets into private hands – legally or illegally, above board or under the table, doesn’t matter. And then there’s the added bonus that the privatizers can then turn around and point to the government as inefficient and wasteful and use that as further justification for further privatization.
The problem is that a large percentage of the population buys into the notion that gubmint = bad, private = good, so there’s no mass resistance to it. I think it’s going to have to get to the point where there is no more “public” and the people will be in dire straits before anything will turn around, at which point it’s going to take a revolution and reinventing the wheel. We’re in for an ugly couple of decades.
LikeLike
You know, the uncounted billions lost in Iraq were also the first thing that came to my mind when I read about the “lost” iPads.
I made a facetious comment above about handing out hundred dollar bills because that is precisely what was done in Iraq.
As with Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no accountability — at least not at the top.
Watch. I bet they will now go after teachers and principals (and probably even janitors) for “losing” the iPads when the ones who are really responsible are the ones at the top (Deasy and others) who set up the program without providing the adequate resources and auditing systems to keep track of what was happening.
And as with Iraq and Afghanistan, what appear to be “mistakes” are not due to mere incompetence.
The folks that dream up these ideas don’t actually care how they turn out in the long run.
Like the bankers on wall Street who knowingly pawned off worthless mortgage packages on unsuspecting pensioners, these schemers are in it for the short term gain, to iPad their resume and then move on to bigger and better things.
LikeLike
In Los Angeles all kids get to use school-issued iPads for work in class and at home. It sounds like iPads are expensive to maintain and are hard to keep track of. In my district, Vista, CA, the kids must use a device to complete math homework, but NO device is provided. What about the low income kids in our district? They can’t do the homework because their parents can’t afford a computer? The source of frustration for both districts are the devices. Give the kids textbooks, paper, and bring back the computer lab in school to incorporate technology. Throw out the personal devices!!
LikeLike
Please understand that only 64 schools and offices were included in the audit. That’s represents only a very small fraction of district facilities. Anyone can guess what the total loss would be if all schools and offices were investigated.
It may be that this audit was instituted because the district’s Bond Oversight Committee requested that all schools report on the computer inventory at their schools in order to get a more realistic number of how many computers were needed for testing. What they found was not pretty. It turned out that the district had not asked for any inventory on computers since 2008 claiming they didn’t have enough money and staff to compile the information. However, they continued to buy enormous numbers of computers for staff and schools.
Could it be that a large number of these computers were not needed due to the lack of accounting and also that some were ordered to replace those lost, broken or stolen?
I will bet that this is a great example of being penny wise and pound foolish. If the IG had not done this report, you can bet that losses and theft would continue to plague the district.
I also think the bulk of effort by the IT department has been directed to data collection in preparation for Deasy’s plan to implement VAM and to put iPads into the hands of each student, teacher and administrator. Could that be the reason why MiSiS took a back seat too?
LikeLike
All that you’re saying is true in the district scheme of procurement and accountability. So, just finding missing equipment is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole procurement process needs auditing and change. Corruption and malfeasance was happening before Deasy and will continue after him if some reforms in procurement are not made. Now we could begin rigorous oversight of expenditures through procurement with additional purchase of technology. Not just the computers but the bigger dog in the room, the bidding for setting up networks and conductivity at district schools. There’s the money and in the past people, that’s where the biggest misuse of public funds has been. Investigate, you’ll see.
LikeLike
So many reasons things grow legs in LAUSD and take a walk: people who ordered the stuff leave before it’s delivered, folks working the gate are parolees doing their “community service” time, keys get purloined, etc. Once, when I was dept. chair in a large high school in LAUSD, the plant manager took me to a storage room where he kept unclaimed deliveries. Let’s just say that after that, no one ran against me for chair because of all the useful goodies I scored that day for department teachers.
The waste is huge partly because the district is unwilling to provide adequate staffing to support its purchases.
LikeLike
Inventory control 101. No one competent to do it? not even bar codes? Unbelievable. Every computer should have a GPS tracking sustem and ID number. City of Cincinnati employees and city-issued tech gear is routinely tracked in this way.
LikeLike
It is because of all of these fiasco’s, payroll screw-ups, ipads, lack of inventory control and so many others that the LAUSD should be split up into 6 districts. There is way too much money in a big district available to be misused on a whim with a school board who seems to always act like they don’t know what’s going on. Money is too plentiful enough to allow for the embezzling, wasting, stealing, bribing. You name it, they have it on all levels. Too big school districts are as bad as too big to fail banks. People are constantly being changed around in jobs so it is like a big shell game. As an LAUSD teacher who has about had it, I am embarrassed as a professional who thought she was helping students. Teachers are continually abused and unappreciated because everyone is after the almighty dollar.
LikeLike
There is no excuse for incompetence… I daresay if a teacher lost a computer in LA they would likely lose their job or at the very least have their pay garnished to make up for the loss… I doubt that anyone in the administration will pay a similar price.
LikeLike
In LA teachers are punished 3 or 4 times for a transgression before they are fired.,that appears to be their version of due process.
LikeLike
iPads are incredibly easy to steal. Unless you’ve got one or more people at each site whose job description includes tracking and monitoring the technology’s use, you are practically begging for problems.
LikeLike
Not ALL teachers were provided iPads or even Notebooks, when that was the norm for
“register-carrying” faculty: arts teachers have not yet received these technologies, but have had professional development on how to use it in class…though the devices didn’t work during the demo! One thing IS true…we need career/college ready applicants for the jobs in District administration. Seems as though there’s been a drought!
LikeLike
The thing is iPads could save a lot of money in arts class. They’re cameras with built in filters, all kinds of photoshop; you can paint and draw on them, you can do a lot with it. If I taught art, U would start using the iPad now, actually I do use IPad because there is no mess, no supplies until you print. I am thinking of putting my art in those digital frames for my next show. Such a waste , they cannot take tests well because of wifi being unstable, but they cab ave a fortune of text books, resources and supplies.the iPad can make teacher evaluations a lot more accurate, improve their practice, help students be better students and parents can keep an eye and everything as can admin. It sucks that LAUSD is squandering this money and this opportunity . I read that one school got the iPads last year and then replaced them all this year💦 WTF? And you get nada? 😾
LikeLike
The story keeps changing. Typical LAUSDeasy. Just loves f with people, the first report said it was mostly iPads, which makes sense because they are portable, unmarked and easiest to sell. The comments in news stories are blaming students , but these details speak to employees thefts . There are usually school site administrators or out of classroom personnel ripping off this stuff at poor schools. The Broadies are just shameless about it too. Because teachers understand how desperately they need these things in class, it seems they do not have such sticky fingers. One year a dean and I & I tracked this AP , who greeted the UPS Guy at his truck at delivery time. He pulled things from the delivery and acted like it had evaporated. The dean knew if she or I reported this bootlicking knucklehead, we’d get fired . A lot of teachers get fired for being rats. There is something really twisted about this since they have to report that stiff by law.
LikeLike