Put It on the Students' Tab

In D.C. schools, misused funds and missing accountability

DISTRICT school auditors conclude that two workers improperly billed the system for more than $13,000 in meals and drinks. Some of these expenses were incurred at a strip club, some during school hours. Yet both workers are retained and even gain added responsibility from a supervisor who continues to defend them. Welcome to the warped world of D.C. schools, where any interest, as long as it's not students', rules. And where no one is ever held accountable.

The case of Emerson Crawley and William R. Jones was among those detailed in a Post investigation into the misuse of student activity funds. Reporters David S. Fallis and April Witt found that money intended to enhance student life, paying for yearbooks and extracurricular activities, for instance, instead has been mismanaged and stolen. Those responsible go largely unscathed because the very lack of internal controls that makes theft so easy also makes it hard to successfully prosecute. The ripping off of children is sickening, but more disturbing is the culture that allows such egregious conduct to flourish.

Consider the reaction of D.C. schools managers to the revelations that Mr. Crawley and Mr. Jones, who work at an after-school program for impoverished children, were reimbursed from a school fund for, among other things, an $82.50 bottle of wine, $180 for an evening at a D.C. nightclub and $225 for a foray to a strip club. Esther Monclova-Johnson first resisted an auditor's recommendation that the money be repaid in full and came up with a dubious plan for Mr. Crawley and Mr. Jones to repay the alcohol charges but work off the rest of their debt. Thankfully, the idea was eventually overruled, and Mr. Jones is said to have fully repaid his share, while Mr. Crawley is still repaying his. In defending her decision to retain the two and to give them more responsibility, Ms. Monclova-Johnson told The Post: "They weren't doing anything that they felt was wrong at the time, but maybe it was." What's "maybe" acceptable about using money from a student fund to go to a strip club during the school day?

Mr. Crawley and Mr. Jones are now in school jobs that pay $61,955 and $38,762 a year, respectively. The attitude exhibited by Ms. Monclova-Johnson, who makes $118,450 as executive director of the Office of Community and Education Programs, is a prime example of why Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is right to want to shake up the central administration. She is hampered in that reform by burdensome personnel rules that protect those who don't do their jobs or who do them badly. Her request for real authority over the bureaucracy is pending before the D.C. Council. Favorable action is needed. The era of no consequences has to end.