{"id":309356,"date":"2010-02-11T21:09:12","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T02:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef012877927ab2970c"},"modified":"2010-02-12T03:40:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T08:40:08","slug":"l-a-unified-schools-chief-cortines-works-for-district-supplier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/309356","title":{"rendered":"L.A. Unified schools&#8217; chief Cortines works for district supplier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/thehomeroom\/images\/2008\/05\/14\/cortines_2.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/thehomeroom\/images\/2008\/05\/14\/cortines_2.jpg\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 5px 5px 0pt; WIDTH: 138px; HEIGHT: 208px\" title=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/thehomeroom\/images\/2008\/05\/14\/cortines_2.jpg\"><\/img>Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines earned more than $150,000 last year for serving on the board of one of the nation&#8217;s leading educational publishing companies, a firm with more than $16 million in contracts with the school district over the last five years.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Scholastic Inc. provides the main reading intervention curriculum for the Los Angeles Unified School District, a program that is part of the company&#8217;s fast-growing educational technology business.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br><\/p>\n<p>Cortines has disclosed his relationship with the New York-based company, and officials say he has avoided any decisions on Scholastic contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Cortines&#8217; role, however, has generated criticism among some former senior officials and current employees. They said the corporate tie creates an appearance of impropriety.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br><\/p>\n<p>&quot;My objection is the perception it creates and the door it opens for others to do the same thing,&quot; said former school board member Marlene Canter, who sits on the city ethics commission and who said she admires Cortines.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-cortines12-2010feb12,0,4857689.story\">Read the full story here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Howard Blume<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines earned more than $150,000 last year for serving on the board of one of the nation&#8217;s leading educational publishing companies, a firm with more than $16 million in contracts with the school district over the last five years.Scholastic Inc. provides the main reading intervention curriculum for the Los [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}