When things go wrong in the L.A. public schools, they go so depressingly wrong. And the reasons they go wrong are just as depressingly predictable -- either the extreme politics and hidden agendas that shouldn't be part of running schools, or worse, the crushing weight of an immovable bureaucracy in which no one is really responsible and no one is held accountable.

And so the investigation on how a suspected child molester came to be assigned to a middle school, where he allegedly molested two students, ended with a report written to the tune of: People made mistakes, but no current employee is to blame. (This tune should be familiar. It was played repeatedly after the payroll fiasco in which thousands of teachers were getting either wildly overpaid or underpaid for months on end.)

That's their story and they're sticking to it, even though the superintendent of the local district, Carol Truscott, violated district policy by not initiating an investigation of Steve Thomas Rooney before assigning him to Markham Middle School. She didn't realize it was the policy, she said. And the district didn't tell her to do an investigation.

Yet Truscott, like all top administrators, must certify twice a year that she's up on all the policies. Paperwork, the district can do. Accountability for the paperwork actually meaning something is another matter.

But with or without a policy, why was Truscott (and other administrators who were faulted in the Rooney case) waiting for orders to act? The point of having managers in local districts is so that they can take the initiative to respond to the needs of their schools and students. At least she could have asked the central office, "Are children safe if I reassign this guy to a school with vulnerable preteen girls?" Or something like that.

Truscott has a solid reputation as a caring and capable administrator. But if people are never held accountable in the schools, no one will ever act. It's so safe to wait for directions - -safe for staff, that is. Not for students.