The Board

At first glance, the members of the Los Angeles school board seemed to be eminently respectable citizens. Then the city began to take a closer look. Last week, after a year of public investigation, Los Angeles clearly saw as sordid a scandal as has ever come out of a big city's schools.

The tale began 13 months ago, when a county grand jury convened to investigate charges that the examinations given to school-system telephone operators were "rigged" to discriminate against Negroes and Jews. In the course of the hearings, a crusading school principal named Mrs. Ione Swan asked to testify. Mrs. Swan was not immediately concerned about the discrimination issue. She had, she said, far more serious matters on her mind.

Death & Maggots. One of Mrs. Swan's concerns was the hard blacktopping that the board had used to cover school playgrounds. Children had fallen on it, and one had died as a result. To Mrs. Swan, the board seemed guilty of manslaughter --and that was not all. It was also guilty of running filthy cafeterias--specifically, of buying all-but-rotten meat. Furthermore, said Mrs. Swan, some members of the board were getting a cut out of certain school-system contracts.

The jury pricked up its ears at Mrs. Swan's charges. School butchers filed affidavits that the food center handled "starting-to-spoil" meat, that hamburgers were watered and sugared to disguise the taste, and that the meat was delivered to the schools in containers coated with maggots. After Mrs. Swan's appearance, the board hastily reformed the food center. But was there still some monkey business about the contracts?

One fat contract the board had made was with the Landier Management Co. The company furnished 95% of the bus transportation for the schools, and in five years its gross revenue had jumped from $235,000 to more than $1,500,000. The thing about the company that bothered the jury was that one school board member, Roy J. Becker, and the husband of another board member, Mrs. Gertrude Rounsavelle, had been handling its insurance and had made themselves a tidy profit of about $8,000. Strictly speaking, their transactions were legal, but the grand jury accused Becker of misconduct and a superior court found him guilty. Becker was dismissed from office; Mrs. Rounsavelle was defeated for reelection. Heads Nos. 1 & 2 had rolled.

Suits & Charges. But the board was still not out of trouble. After taking care of Insuranceman Becker, the jury accused Board Member J. Paul Elliott of misconduct for taking $4,400 in legal fees from the Landier interests. In the meantime, the parents of the child who was killed on a blacktopped playground brought suit against the board for $50,000. The parents of another child later killed the same way sued for $351,000. Finally, the grand jury made up its mind about the question of the telephone operators, declared that the board had "condoned" discrimination against "colored, Jewish, Oriental applicants, and applicants of middle age."

As if that were not enough, the board's president, Mrs. Eleanor Allen, suddenly ran into some personal difficulties when she testified in federal court that a mysterious radiotherapy gadget, invented by a Hollywood chiropractor, could cure her of any illness, even though she were a thousand miles away. As a result of the unfavorable publicity, Mrs. Allen resigned from the board.

Darby Day. Mrs. Allen's was Head No. 3, but hers was not the last. The next target was ex-Schoolteacher Olin E. Darby, who had also been profiting from school contracts. As chairman of the board's purchasing and distribution committee, he was able to swing a $68,000 school contract to the Jack & Jill Ice Cream Co., which occupied a store he happened to own. And as a reward for his efforts, he was thus able to charge Jack & Jill an exorbitant rent. Last week a superior court jury convicted Darby of a felony for having a "prohibitive interest" in the contract--a clear violation of the state law governing the conduct of public officials.

With Darby Day gone by, Los Angeles was ready to add up the score its board had made. Out of seven members, only two had escaped unscathed, but one of these had been defeated for re-election and another had stepped up to the City Council. Last week, of all the original members, only two remained--Elliott, still awaiting trial, and Darby, still awaiting sentence.

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