The State Auditor’s Office Tuesday issued the unflattering results of an audit .pdf that found the Seattle School District overpaid employees, mismanaged funds, and failed to enforce its own rules, among other problems.
The audit, which considered data from September 2008 to August 2009, found that the board and district officials were “not as familiar with state and federal law on school district operations and the use of grant funds as the public would expect.” Thus, the district is at greater risk of losing federal funds and non-compliance with laws and regulations, the audit found.
The report should come as a wake-up call for the district—which is underfunded and over budget—and district Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, who has faced criticism in recent months for what critics say is her incompetence in handling the district. The school board voted 5-2 to extend Goodloe-Johnson’s contract by another year last night.
District spokesperson Patti Spencer says that Goodloe-Johnson and the board recognized the problem. “We are committed to solve it,” she says, adding that the district has already taken steps to address some of the issues raised in the audit.
The audit found that the Seattle School District, which has 45,000 students, did not comply with state law on recording meeting minutes and making them publicly available. For example, the transcript of a public meeting was missing, but Spncer calls that “an anomaly.”
The district did not report loss of public funds to the State Auditor’s Office, the audit found, and used $1.8 million in restricted capital project funds for training instead of actual construction costs. The state auditor ruled the latter to be against state law.
The district also overpaid employees by $334,000 due to complications arising during a payroll system conversion. “Of course employees should not be overpaid,” Spencer says. The district has been able to recover $71,000 (21 percent) of the overpayment and has payment plans in place to get back another $146,000. Some of the money was paid to individuals who no longer work for the district.
Still pennies compared to the wads of tax dollars going into the sinkhole that calls itself the Billionaires Tunnel.
There are four main reasons we’re broke:
1. Insane wars of foreign adventure used to get China and Russia cheap resources using US soldiers’ and mercenaries’ lives (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran …)
2. War on Drugs over Marijuana – prisons, courts, prosecutors, cops, and non-productive citizens
3. Billionaires Tunnel that will sink all tax dollars for the next few decades into an unneeded deep bore tunnel that makes traffic worse, has lower freight capacity, has LESS VEHICLE thruput, and doubles global warming (by the way, the EPA regs for that dropped today, so if they build it they’re ALREADY IN VIOLATION of the new regs)
and
4. Continued non-collection of taxes for supposed non-profits run by Gates and Allen locally.
It’s harder and harder to say that our schools don’t get enough money, when stories like this are becoming more popular across the country.
Are they getting more than 50 percent of the total state budget?
No.
Thus, the answer is they aren’t getting enough money.
That would make something resembling sense if increases in student spending were shown to increase student performance, which is the opposite of what has been shown. Since the early 70’s, states have steadily increased per-student spending in real dollars, while student performance has steadily decreased.
That said, I should admit that I believe what the state describes as “student performance” is, ultimately meaningless. But it’s naive to suggest that public education, as a whole, is any more competent or less corrupt than the military. More money doesn’t help large institutions become less corrupt or inept.
Good argument.
Let’s defund highways.
I’m glad somebody at The Stranger has written something informative about Seattle Public Schools. It’s a really important, and really messed up, part of life in Seattle. Thanks for caring.
The important thing is that none of the incompetent people are losing their jobs. And that, after all, is what public school is for, right?
“We are committed to solve it”
No, they’re not. That the Auditor has to be repeating, year after year, the SAME problems should tell you something. That the Auditor rarely, if ever, calls out a School Board and basically took the Seattle School Board to task for NOT doing their jobs should tell you something.
The public meeting was NOT an anomaly because the Auditor cites more than one time that it happened.
Let’s see – fuel card issues, rental revenue, records retention and credit cards, all part of the audit. In fact, on the Superintendent’s MOU to use her credit card, there are handwritten notes of items to include. Unfortunately for her, they are not legal for her to do. One is for catering for $3800. The card should only allow her up to $1,000 AND that’s not an allowable expense. That should tell you something about how she thinks of her position.
Here’s the bottom line from the Audit:
“The District Superintendent and executive management have not familiarized themselves with state law and District policy regarding school operations. Additionally, the Board does not provide oversight to ensure laws and policies are followed.
The Board has adopted generic policies and delegated all of its authority to the Superintendent to create specific procedures to govern day-to-day District operations.
However, the Board does not evaluate these procedures to determine if they are effective or appropriate for the District.
Further, although we have communicated internal controls weaknesses in prior audits in the areas noted above, the District has not addressed them.”
The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing in this district. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson is in the power seat and the Board built her that throne. They didn’t even say in their own evaluation that their major LEGAL job as elected officials is to oversee her work. They are clearly afraid of her, do not want to challenge her and go so far as to ignore what their legal mandate is.
Four of them will be up for election in Nov. 2011. Please remember this audit and all the ones that came before it that they promised to do better on. They haven’t and we have a Board that will not oversee the Superintendent.
@5, if I had suggested that schools should be “defunded,” then your response wouldn’t seem baseless and juvenile. I am beginning to understand your reputation.