SEATTLE -- They cost taxpayers millions: Desktop computers, laptops, printers, scanners, digital cameras, camcorders, LCD projectors and interactive white boards.

They're supposed to be in the classroom, but thousands of pieces of high tech equipment are missing from our local schools. And no one can tell the Problem Solvers - or parents - where they are.

"I would say that somebody better find that stuff or somebody's going to lose a job," said Seattle parent Deborah Breuler.

We used public records laws to get inventory reports for the Puget Sound area's largest school districts: Tacoma, Lake Washington, Bellevue, Everett, Shoreline, and the state's largest district, Seattle.

We spent weeks analyzing the data, and our investigation determined nearly 9,500 items purchased with your tax dollars have disappeared.

We found the most trouble in the Tacoma Public Schools, a district with 29,000 students, half of them low income.

Their records show an inventory of 37,205 assets. 4,795 of them have gone astray.

The missing items range from expensive Apple computers to a Genie Forklift that simply vanished during the Stadium High School remodeling project. The cost to taxpayers? According to Tacoma's records, it's $6,076,889.

"Right now we know it's a concern and it should be a concern to the taxpayers," said district Chief Financial Officer Ron Hack.

He admits he's not exactly sure where the items are, and he suspects some have been moved to other schools. He guesses others have been surplused, but lack the proper paperwork.

Hack also admits that some of the items could have been stolen, but he's not sure how many.

Late Friday, Tacoma Public Schools told us they located 578 items on the missing list, including more than 200 Hewlett-Packard computers.

In Seattle we found more uncertainty and more guesswork. Among an inventory of 40,180 assets, 1,908 of them are gone.

"There's just no excuse for it," said Seattle parent Eva Thompson. "Money's tight right now".

District spokesman David Tucker said some computers, printers, scanners - even big items like universal weight sets - haven't been seen in more than three years.

But it doesn't stop there.

Inventory sheets put question marks around another 2,225 'unresolved' assets. School administrators suspect they're in some school, somewhere, but they can't tell us which one.

On this long list of unresolved items: a Kubota Tractor, three John Deere utility vehicles, and a Steinway grand piano.

After the Problem Solvers started asking questions, the district tracked down those five items. They also located most of the missing universal weight sets.

But whether the items are 'missing' or 'unresolved,' the fact is Seattle School District officials still can't lay their hands more than 4,000 pieces of equipment.

"There are things that we certainly need to improve upon and we certainly acknowledge that," Tucker said.

Technology rich Lake Washington School District seems to be doing better.

Out of 39,160 items, our analysis shows 608 are unaccounted for. Their original cost? $478,542.13.

"We can't tell you exactly where they are at this moment," said district spokeswoman Kathryn Reith.

Among the missing items are 10 high-tech "Activboards," that cost nearly $1,100 each.

The district found two for us. They'd been returned to the manufacturer. They suspect the others are in classrooms, but lack the proper paperwork to pinpoint their location.

The district also discovered a computer was lost when a former teacher failed to return it, found two of the missing camcorders, and determined a missing LCD projector and a large copier had been improperly surplused.

"We don't want these things to be missing," Reith said. "We want 100 percent tracking but you have things that happen."

We can't give you a complete picture of what's going on at the Shoreline, Bellevue and Everett school districts because all of them gave us incomplete information.

The Everett School District detailed 14 items that had been reported as stolen or missing. This list includes digital cameras, laptop computers and a defibrillator.

By e-mail, Director of Communications Mary Waggoner told us "...we believe we have a system that responsibly accounts for public inventory".

But, despite repeated requests, the district failed to provide an accounting of the number of assets whose whereabouts are currently unknown.

The Bellevue School District told us about more than a dozen items that had been reported missing or stolen. But we don't know if there was any equipment they couldn't find during their routine inventory process. We requested, but did not receive, that information.

The Shoreline School District tells us none of their items with a purchase price of $5,000 or higher are missing. But they couldn't give us an accounting of the whereabouts of items with a purchase price less than $5,000. We were told staff at each individual school decides whether or not to track these items.

They did reveal, after a second request, that 100 of the 6,000 laptops issued to each teacher and student in the district were stolen or misplaced last year.

With so many districts facing massive budget shortfalls, many parents expect a better accounting.

"This is a business they're running and they need to show us where the money's going," said parent Deborah Breuler.

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