Straight Outta Compton: A $30,000 Weekend

If I had $30,000 to spend and the money was all mine, I wouldn’t think twice about treating 64 friends to a nice weekend in a luxury hotel. I don’t have 64 friends, but if I did, let the good times roll.

On the other hand, if the money were public money and the 64 people were employees and not friends, and the weekend was for business and not pleasure, I’d figure that something less than a four-star, oceanfront resort might do.

This would be especially true if I had just emerged from a long nightmare of fiscal chaos and was being watched by just about everyone and his brother on how I was spending my money.

I am able to reach this conclusion even though I am not a financial genius, which is why my wife handles our household budget. But if I can figure out that spending like a drunken stevedore is a bad idea under certain conditions, why can’t the Compton Unified School District understand it too?

Must I lend them my wife to teach them frugality?

I am referring here to $30,000 the district spent to house 65 of its managers for two nights at the end of April at the pricey Surf & Sand Resort in Laguna Beach. A district spokeswoman said it involved a civil-rights training session for administrators in the district, adding somewhat casually that it was no big deal.

I guess when you’ve got an annual budget of $185.6 million, spending $30,000 for a nice weekend isn’t such a big deal. But when it’s taxpayers’ money, that’s a cash cow of a different color.

Nothing that happens in Compton really surprises me. Its politics are the emotional equivalent of a Mad Hatter’s tea party. But I did have some hope that the school district, at least, might be getting it together. That, alas, doesn’t appear to be the case.

Those who follow chaos in education might recall that the district was taken over by the state eight years ago because it was $20 million in debt, its student test scores were the lowest in California, its payroll was padded and the schools were in disarray. The district was in shambles, from the bathrooms to the boardrooms.

The good people of Compton worked hard to change the way things were being run, and last September the state Department of Education returned full local control. In addition to raising test scores and cleaning up the schools, a new superintendent had been hired who vowed to “do good things for the children.”

It appears that good things are also in store for his administrators, if that weekend in Paradise is any example.

The big-spending superintendent is Jesse Gonzales, who held a similar job in Las Cruces, N.M. Unfortunately, a few months after he was appointed here, the New Mexico attorney general’s office announced that it was investigating whether the $390,000 in “incentives” he received over a 12-year period were legally approved by the district’s school board.

All in all, with a state monitor still watching the Compton schools and now New Mexico investigators eyeing its former superintendent, this might not be a good time to lay out a lot of mazuma at a fancy resort, even if it does offer 100% cotton terry cloth robes in every room.

Compton school district representative Christine Sanchez said the administrators met at the Surf & Sand because they received a good rate and because the district’s principals had met there last year and liked the accommodations. But at a place like that, facing the ocean in an upscale town, what’s not to like?

Breaking down the $30,000, the average room rate for the retreat’s 65 participants was $231 a night. According to a rate chart for the hotel, rooms normally go for from $295 to $375 a night, so it appears that they did get something of a break.

On the other hand, there are hotels throughout Southern California that offer even better prices. The AAA California Tour Book, which I am happy to lend Supt. Gonzales, lists a dozen hotels and motels up and down the coast that no doubt would welcome the Compton school administrators with open arms and maybe even throw in a free continental breakfast.

If the district administrators can make do without an ocean view, the Brentwood/Bel-Air Holiday Inn offers rooms from $149 a night, with rates available for larger groups. You look down, not on the blue Pacific but on the beautiful 405 Freeway. But you do get a coffee maker in every room.

Sanchez pointed out that all of the food for the 21/2 days the administrators were at the Surf & Sand was donated by vendors who had worked for the district for a minimum of three years, so at least they ate for free.

I’ve never stayed at the Surf & Sand, even on an expense account, because the money crunchers here would go crazy if I did. I haven’t stayed there on my own, either, because my own director of finance, which is to say my wife, would point out that we were only sleeping there, not buying the place.

It is advice I am passing, at no cost, to the Compton school district. Remember, the next time you hold a retreat, you’re not buying the hotel, you’re only sleeping there. And a view of the beautiful 405 is absolutely free.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.