ON THE TOWN:An educated guess about school logic

FOR THE RECORD

A column by Steve Smith on Wednesday, “An educated guess about school logic,” gave the incorrect publication date of a Daily Pilot story about the theft of $53,000 of lighting equipment at Newport Harbor High School. The story ran Sunday, Jan. 7.

**********

There is a rhythm and ebb and flow that most places of business or government institutions develop after they’ve been around for a while.

For example, I have had some professional reasons to visit a busy physician’s office in Newport Beach several times over the past couple of months.

When I showed up around 2 p.m. last week, it was quiet. My natural curiosity took over, and I asked the receptionist if it was usual for the office to be quiet at that time of day.

“Tuesdays aren’t usually very busy,” she replied.

And I’ll guess that you know exactly when your Starbucks or supermarket is busy, too.

The folks who run these places know when it is usually busy and when it is not, and they make adjustments accordingly, usually in the number of people they have available to take care of customers.

A business does not have to be open much more than a year to figure it out.

But when you are a school or a school district, that learning curve and the natural logic that follows does not seem to apply.

My case in point is the theft of about $53,000 in lighting equipment from Robins Hall at Newport Harbor High School.

I am not making up this next part. It is a direct quote from Daily Pilot reporter Michael Miller’s story of last Saturday, Jan. 6.

About the theft, Newport Beach police Sgt. Evan Sailor said, “We usually get a lot of computer thefts from there, and it’s usually students or former students,” he said.

OK, now call me crazy, but if it is common knowledge that there are “a lot” of thefts there, shouldn’t the school do something about it?

Here are some ideas off the top of my head:

1) Put in an alarm system;

2) Get better locks;

3) Move out anything expensive (Ooh, that’s a good one!);

4) Move in a Rottweiler or two;

5) Install some video cameras.

As I wrote, those are just the first few that came to mind.

Reading a story like this, it’s hard not to believe what many people feel: that because it’s the taxpayers (that’s you and me) paying for it, somehow it’s OK since there is more money where that came from.

The perception here is that has been the attitude for years. Need some money? Raise taxes with a bond.

Hey, that worked! So, let’s try it again with another bond! Hey, this is fun! No one is asking us where the money’s going or when it’s going to get spent — it’s kind of like a checkbook full of blank checks!

And another thing, if there are “a lot” of thefts from the school, why haven’t we heard about them?

When and where have they been? Have we caught anyone? Do we have any leads?

Mostly, I’m tempted to believe that like a lot of other bad news that happens in our schools, these incidents are swept under the rug or some kind of big spin is put on them to confuse us, such as, “Yes, $53,000 in stuff was stolen, but guess what? The school still has $2 million in other inventory that hasn’t been stolen!”

I don’t know, maybe I’ve been wasting my time with this accountability thing; you know, trying to get people on the school board or in the schools to own their mistakes.

Maybe most people just don’t care about the waste of their tax dollars or seeing to it that local officials are held to the same standards the rest of us are held to on our jobs.

There’s that “logic” stuff again.