Reached by phone today, Seattle School Board President Steven Sundquist said that the board will leave no stone unturned to find the perpetrators behind Seattle Public School’s alleged $1.8 million financial fraud.
The board has launched its own investigation into the alleged fraud, detailed in a state audit report (.pdf) released today and obtained by The Seattle Times yesterday, which led to the district wasting $1.5 million for services with a “questionable public purpose,” and another $280,005 for services it never received and ended up benefiting a private company.
For example, the district paid a vendor $74,780 to develop training materials which the audit found was mostly copied from other sources. Other vendors charged for food, web services, and professional training programs which the audit concluded the district shouldn’t have paid for.
Sundquist said that the board had hired Seattle attorney Patricia Eakes to investigate the alleged fraud and was expecting to get some answers by the end of this week. “The state audit report has been published, but the school board wants a better understanding of what happened,” he said. “The state auditor’s job is to try and figure out where the facts are and whether there were cracks in internal control. We want to know what kind of management oversight occurred.” Which basically translates into whether Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and other top level administrators knew anything about this, and if yes, whether they did anything about it. Although Sundquist couldn’t pinpoint exactly when the independent investigation report would be released, he did say that Eakes had “seen all the headlines and was working as furiously as possible to finish the report.”
Meanwhile, the district’s former program manager, Silas Potter, the person singled out in the audit report for signing off on the contract services the district never received, is missing. Potter is wanted by both Eakes and the county prosecutor’s office for questioning, but nobody knows where he is. Potter’s immediate supervisor Fred Stephens left the district to take up the role of deputy assistant for commerce secretary Gary Locke in the Obama administration.
Sundquist said that the board hopes to make the findings available to the public either through a press release or the district’s website. “We will discuss them at an executive board session Tuesday and there is also a public board meeting Wednesday,” Sundquist said. The board decided to launch an independent investigation after the district noticed irregular transactions and reported it to the Office of the State Auditor.
Sundquist said that he along with board member Michael DeBell and the district’s Chief Counsel Noel Treat had reported the missing funds to the King County Prosecutor’s Office. “The prosecutor’s office will determine whether the law was violated and whether they can make a criminal case,” Sundquist said. The board’s job, he said, was to make sure that proper policies were in place and even remove people if needed, to make sure incidents like this don’t happen again. “It’s an assault on public confidence,” he said. Especially at a time when the district is struggling under a massive budget deficit and needs all the support it can get. This latest audit follows two unflattering audits from the state about the district’s handling of public funds, and comes at a time when the City of Seattle is trying to convince its residents to vote in favor of a $231 million education levy which seeks to support programs not funded by the district. Only this time, it’s the city, and not the district which gets to be in charge of the levy money.
Will Silas also give back his award from Seattle or honoring his work in diversity contracting in the school district?
This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about the Deeply Borrowed Tunnel and the use of foreign firms and contractors for it.
Wow.
Tell the defendants to claim they are police and Above The Law. That usually works with the Prosecutor.
Why am I getting echoes of Claude Rains in Casablanca after reading Mr. Sundquists outburst?
If he wants to start now, maybe he should address the “management oversight” where the people who knew about the fraud didn’t say anything out of fear of reprisal.
You know what, if I had children I would send them to private school if I lived in Seattle…and I’m a hard left socialist.
Does that say anything about the Seattle Public Schools?
@4 no, it means you’re like Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s parents.
Where the hell has Sundquist been the last couple of years? We’ve needed that kind of oversight!
Oh wait.
Can we assume that their investigating lawyer, Patricia Eakes, was hired directly by the School Board and reports only to them? i.e. she is not part of the district hierarchy under Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson?
Confirmation please, from someone in the know.
“Sundquist said that he along with board member Michael DeBell and the district’s Chief Counsel Noel Treat had reported the missing funds to the King County Prosecutor’s Office.”
When? The timeline on all of this needs to be established to figure out who knew what.
As a long-time district watcher and blogger at Save Seattle Schools, I knew about this months ago. But figuring out all the pieces is not easy. There is more to come out of this story but we have to wait for what else might get released either via the district or the SAO.
At the end of the day, there are people who need to go. It does not matter if they were involved in any alleged malfeasance. There are people all the way up to the top of the SPS food chain who are responsible for oversight and they let this get away from them (over a period of years). If the Board does not hold those people accountable, good luck with any of the 4 up for reelection in the fall keeping those Board positions.
Going to be fun School Board elections, that’s for sure.
“”Does that say anything about the Seattle Public Schools?”
Says plenty about your liberal hypocrisy that denies the rest of us choice in schools and imposed busing. But then again, Seattle us full if ‘do as I say not as I do’ liberals which is why there are so many private schools.
Seems our mr. Silas was in charge of ensuring ‘diversity’ among SPS contractors. I guess that’s like asking ACORN to find housing for men in fur coats and big hats.
Then Seattle FIX YOUR FUCKING SCHOOL SYSTEM ALREADY!!!! How many time do we go down this road with the public schools in this town? We know there are problems but no one actually fixes anything.
And it is because of shit like is happening right now that give the right wing excuses to point out what they call the failure of public education.
*and the levy the Mayor is proposing is a great idea..wish someone would have proposed it a couple of years ago*
wow, days like this I shouldn’t even bother reading crap like that in @10 and @11, cause it just makes me realize the Draft would be a good thing for the neocons and their fellow America-hating tea bagger friends.
Waiting to see what comes out of the plea bargins… The race is on to cooperate rather than be implicated. There is no honor among thieves.
“remove people if necessary”? WTF do they have to do for the board to think it is DEFINITELY necessary for them to be removed, kill someone with an axe in a kindergarten classroom? Do your fucking job Sundquist.
Katy, you are laboring under the misapprehension that Steve Sundquist believes that he works for the the public and his job is to protect the public’s interests. That’s just charmingly naive.
Mr. Sundquist works for the Education Reform Movement and his job is to facilitate whatever programs they are pushing. He believes that it is his job to do whatever the superintendent tells him to do – and quickly. He is doing his job. That’s just dishearteningly sad.
“wow, days like this I shouldn’t even bother reading crap like that in @10 “
Wow, because 5 hrs later I was proved right, that this was a slush fund for all of Seattle’s leading ‘diversity’ pimps?