Why isn’t LAUSD school Superintendent Ramon Cortines under arrest? Why is Cortines’ prolonged, blatant and lucrative conflict of interest activity being ignored? Where is the district attorney when you need one? My friend Howard Blume reported in last Friday’s Times that Cortines, head of the second largest school district in the U.S., was paid $150,000 last year for serving on the board of Scholastic Inc., the country’s leading educational publishing company which sells its books to LAUSD. It seems Cortines has been on Scholastic’s board for several years and Scholastic has sold LAUSD $16 million worth of educational reading material over the past five years.
Why is nobody except my next door neighbor and I outraged by this textbook example of a conflict of interest? Cortines is paid $250,000 a year to head the school district and he’s paid $150,000 a year by the company that sells the school district its books! Cortines works for two masters and that is in direct violation of sections 1090 and 87100 of the Government Code. Any other public official would be under the jail for this kind of operation. So why not Cortines?