Sara Roos reviews the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars by Los Angeles School Superintendent Austin Beutner, who was given authority without accountability during the pandemic. She explains where the money went by referring to the school board’s documents.
She writes:
The Superintendent who now controls purse, policy and process, was appointed with a tenuous mandate, by a school board elected under an avalanche of ideological school-privatization money. That board unethically extending the tenure of its slim majority just long enough to appoint this Superintendent by failing to censure its swing board member charged with felonious campaign fraud. What priorities does the former investment banker Superintendent Austin Beutner’s emergency spending reveal?
Given this extraordinary freedom from accountability, what did Beutner do? SaraRoos explains.
She shows how Beutner has used the crisis to outsource crucial functions to private management. She even names the vendors who profited.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A line item under Instructional Expenditures, subtitle Remote instruction, licenses, software. PD, administration says:
2.5 K exams monitored online @18.01 per exam = $25,000
BUT $25,000 divided by $18.01 = 1388 exams.
I am no auditor, but I wonder who audited the line items?
What does a “monitored online” exam require, and who provides that?
Just asking.
The lack of oversight illustrates deep problems with the Board and the Beutner.
Superintendent Greedy Investment Banker spent emergency funds on baseball caps? And most of the money, hundreds (plural) of millions (plural) of dollars went to a private security firm? And none of these purchases were reviewed for price gouging?
the “security” game now sucking up more and more educational dollars
$854,000 for 100,000 masks? Someone is raking in more than $775,000 of pure graft.
Resinous graft.
I want to place part of my comment from another post here in the hopes that more people in Los Angeles will read it:
Diane, Austin Beutner, in his address on KCLS this morning, said LAUSD is going ahead with blended instruction next school year. He said to forget about rises and falls in case numbers, to forget about masks and desk spacing, to forget about transportation and eating details, and to leave virus testing and tracing to other agencies, but come heck or high water, we’re flipping instruction. He wants students to attend school three days a week, rotating in cohorts, with all-online school for some. I am livid, but it will be up to Jackie, Scott, parents, UTLA (who I hope, while it’s so difficult to communicate with each other, are on top of this and the dangers of blending online products with school), and us teachers to thoughtfully and peacefully disobey Beutner’s unjust directives. If school is going to be partially online in the future, and it shouldn’t be but if it is, at the very least that future needs to have end dates attached so it does not become the permanent future.