Six people have been charged with a total of 205 felony counts for allegedly diverting millions of dollars in grant money from S.F. schools. The current and former San Francisco Unified School District employees are alleged to have illegally directed over $15 million dollars into slush fund accounts over a 10 year period, with $250,000 misappropriated for personal use and another $500k for unauthorized salaries and bonuses.
Let's name names, shall we? The accused are Associate Superintendent Trish Bascom, former Senior Executive Directors Linda Sue Lovelace and Meyla Fatma Ruwin, former Principal Administrative Analyst Lilian Lamorena Capuli, former Assistant Principal Mychel M. Navales, and Senior Clerk Typist Betty Chuey Wong. They are expected to turn themselves in on Wednesday, at which point they'll face the wrath of District Attorney George Gascón, who said in a statement, "My office will not tolerate corruption and will prosecute these defendants accordingly."
The money was allegedly diverted to slush funds held at family-friendly community-based organizations, then disbursed at the direction of Bascom and members of the Student Support Services Division without the knowledge of SFUSD administrators. Gascón says that $4.7 million of the grant money has been recovered so far. Aside from the $750k that was used for personal spending money and bonuses, the rest of the money was diverted towards educational projects but was not spent on what it was intended.
We can't pretend to understand the byzantine intersections of education, non-profit and government entanglements that might have their roots in a case like this, but if these stewards of education did indeed steal hundreds of thousands from schools in dire need of every penny they can get, then hope for future generations is even dimmer than we could have imagined. Sorry kids, money is for grownups!
