MILLIONS MISPLACED IN KANSAS CITY

The billion-dollar-plus desegregation effort in the Kansas City school district -- paid for by all of Missouri's taxpayers -- has never made sense. Missourians have watched with curiosity and indignation as the district, with the help of a federal judge in Springfield, embarked on a doomed-to-failure attempt to create the perfect school system with the most modern state-of-the-art buildings and equipment. Again, all of this was paid for by Missouri's taxpayers.

Now comes a report that millions of dollars were spent by the Kansas City district on equipment that appeared to be missing from the district. An investigation that began a year ago has discovered that a big chunk of the brand-new equipment isn't really missing. Instead, the equipment was purchased and then put into storage without ever opening the boxes and crates. Here are some examples:

-- $311,472 of furniture that has been stored for five years in its original packaging. The district's purchasing department "forgot" it had ordered the furniture.

-- Farm equipment purchased for a magnet school emphasizing agricultural technology was never used, because teachers and administrators decided after it was ordered that it didn't fit with the classes being offered.

-- A tractor purchased in 1990 to mow the lawn around a school was put in the district's surplus-property warehouse without ever being used. Why? The tractor was too big for the school's storage shed.

-- $20,720 of computers were purchased in 1991 for a technology high school but never used. Two years later the district bought another $40,000 of computers for the school.

-- Several hundred large wooden cabinets were bought for new or renovated schools but were never used because the schools had built-in cabinets.

Officials of the school district admit there are thousands of pieces of property that they can't account for. But they contend it is just a matter of poor record-keeping, not theft.

Regardless, there are items valued at an estimated $3.3 million still unaccounted for that have never been put to use in the school district after they were purchased.

Is it any wonder Missourians are outraged over the Kansas City desegregation plan?