Nice!

Lawrence School Superintendent Indicted

Suspended Lawrence Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy has been indicted on charges of fraud and embezzlement. An Essex County grand jury returned nine indictments against the educator Tuesday after months of investigation. Police had raided his home and office.

Laboy is accused of having school employees do work at his home and run errands on his behalf while they were on school time. The indictments also said school employees provided graphic work for the Association of Latino Adminstrators and Superintendents, a group Laboy led as president.

Remember this the next time some bleeding heart tells you we need to spend more on education. No. No we don't. We need to make better use of the money we're currently spending (MA is 5th in the nation for per-pupil expenditures, BTW). We need to seriously trim the hell out of the top-heavy administration, weed out those that underperform, and focus more on the education rather than administration. Lawrence is in the top third of all MA cities for per-pupil expenditures in the entire state yet has the FIFTH LOWEST graduation rate. It ain't the money, folks.

Rampant corruption is but one of the problems facing underperforming schools. It's the racism of soft expectations, where we don't closely examine the minority-run schools; we don't question the results of minorities no matter how skewed they may be. We tend to look the other way when superintendents are using school resources for their pet projects or for their own personal gain.

The Globe has their own front page story. The details are even more damning:

LAWRENCE - School Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy was indicted yesterday on eight counts of fraud and embezzlement alleging that he had school employees complete a variety of personal errands, including providing electrical work at his home in Methuen, hauling away his trash and dumping it on school property, and picking up his grandchildren from school.

Laboy, who has been the center of controversy during his decade at the helm of the city’s struggling school system, had workers fix his home computer, meet contractors at his house during school hours, and drive his adult son to his job at a pizza shop, authorities said.

Nice, eh? It sure sounds like he was treating the city of Lawrence's school system like his own private work force. Bear this in mind, too:

Laboy has been on paid administrative leave since June, when police raided his office and confiscated computer equipment from his home, but has continued to receive about $4,000 a week while accumulating vacation time and retirement benefits, the mayor’s office said.

SINCE JUNE. He has been getting paid and accruing vacation time and seniority for NINE FREAKING MONTHS now. This is in a time when cities are laying people off, and the city of Lawrence itself has had to go begging, hat in hand, to the state for more money. And this guy's sitting around, getting paid, while the investigation into the depths of his corruption drags on.

And, as a side note, imagine the uproar had it been a white superintendent using school resources for an "Association of White Superintendents"...

That is all.