It is very disheartening to encourage people to seek office, endorse them, encourage others to support them, and then see those candidates fall into the same hole as the ones they replace.
Candidates may say, “People have a right to know what is going on and how their money is being spent.” That may be true when you are speaking of others but not when you get elected and the proverbial “me” is involved.
Upon first learning that there may be financial problems in the school district, we sought information from School Board President Danny Cowart. He did acknowledge some irregularities but said that nothing indicates missing funds or intentional misdoings. This problem has now evolved into four--four, mind you--different audits of school finances. If that is the case, how could you assume that nothing was wrong? There could be missing funds, but no one has a clear picture until this is all settled.
Try getting behind on your personal taxes and see how many notices you get. Surely there were warnings. However, no tax irregularity was ever discussed at a public school board meeting.
The most basic premise of business or personal finances is knowing how much money you have. The school district’s bank accounts have not been properly balanced since 2012. How does that happen? Someone stated that the balances were maintained on a balance sheet somewhere. A couple of folks on the school board should be well qualified to be aware of the financial position of the school district. Shame on them.
It does not matter how large the financial reports are, this is pretty basic. You flip to the back page and look at the bottom line. Then you go to the balance sheet and look. Those figure should match. This is over-simplifying it, but we have successful business people on that school board with the experience that should prevent problems like this from arising.
Board member Stacey Herring reminded the other members that ultimately the board is responsible for the finances. Supt. Greg Paes confirmed that this is, in fact, a board issue.
At a board meeting, it is typical for department heads to tell the board, “This information has been approved by the superintendent and he recommends you approve it.” There is no discussion about what is included or any problems involved.
That is how all of these accounting contracts were approved with no public discussion as to why or what was in them.
To put this into perspective, at a typical monthly meeting the board is probably presented over 200-plus pages of supporting documents, including things like financials, new programs and/or modifications to existing procedure.
While approving recommendations may speed up meetings, it gives board members little or no knowledge of what is going on and why.
To the administration’s credit they were supplying a copy of this data to the paper prior to the pandemic. Now they provide internet access to documents they are discussing. Review of the documents is where the contracts were found. The office of the superintendent and the administrative assistant were then helpful in making information available or answering questions.
But the problem is knowing what you are looking for when you start trying to research the data.
When all of this information surfaced board member Patrice Boykin suggested that a press release should be issued. The suggestion fell on deaf ears.
We have tried to work with the school board on different issues through the years, but they are not always forthcoming with much information. It started with the initial hiring of Superintendent Paes, who was hired basically without considering other candidates. The board was not willing to let the public know what, who or how things were being considered.
Part of the issue is that district leadership seems more concerned about how things appear than they are with solving the problem.
The consolidated school project has been much the same. The board changes plans and directions without keeping the community abreast of what is going on. That in itself would make consolidation and the bond issue to support a new facility less than popular.
We voted you folks into to office to lead us--keep us up to snuff about what’s going on.
