Thank God We’re Not Washington, D.C.

I just discovered an amazing, horrific series done last year by The Washington Post investigating D.C.’s school district. Bureaucratic red tape, mismanagement, fraud, outright thievery! Granted, educating in D.C. is tougher than in LA because the US Congress, not any particular state, controls funding for the District, and so they get buffeted by all sorts of political winds. BUT. Come on, people. So, without further ado, here are the:

Top 10 Signs Your School District Isn’t Really The Greatest

#10 Your kid’s algebra homework is to clip pictures of motorcycles from magazines.

#9 Your school’s business manager steals the chess club’s bake sale money, $40,000 of it!

#8 Your lawyers charge you $450 to send one form letter.

#7 Your afterschool program pays for its employees’ strip club expenses.

#6 You pay a consultant $900,000 each year to count how many kids you have, and you still don’t know how many kids you have.

#5 Your district gives a former principal $2.9 million–on a 1-page expense voucher!

#4 Your reading program is mandated by a US Senator from a different state who gets campaign money from the company’s founders, and after you use it, the company’s founders sells the company for $380 million.

#3 Your principal gets called in downtown for going over budget, only to learn there are two teachers on her payroll no one has ever seen at at the school.

#2 The US Army Corps of Engineers can’t fix your boilers for $700 million.

#1 Your superintendent got 2 Purple Hearts, 2 Legions of Honor, and 2 Silver Stars in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, but he flees the school district in defeat within two years.

Uh huh. Shake your heads. D.C.