Seattle Schools Community Forum

I missed Part 1 of the responses to the State Audit by the staff at the last Audit and Finance Committee meeting. Each issue has a number. They started at A5.16 (if you are keeping up). I am disappointed to have missed their explanation on a couple of the previous ones like: A3.1 - District staff was not aware of state law on the use of capital project money or the guidance provided in the Schools Accounting Manual . Staff in Accounting, Budget and Payroll attended a one-day workshop in July. Training for other staff started in August, 2010. The district will have to pay back $1.2M from the General Fund to the Capital Fund. Well, if the words " staff was not aware of state law on the use of capital project money " doesn't scare you, I don't have much left until Halloween. These are the people spending your tax dollars on our school buildings. Also, this is not some obscure area of capital spending. I'll have to try to get the minutes from t...

At the last Board meeting, COO/CFO Don Kennedy presented a action plan for the district's response to the State Auditor's report. Now this isn't the district's first attempt. They did put out a reply in July 2010 about some actions taken but boy, were there some whopper statements in it. Here's one: “Because we are deeply committed to being good stewards of the public’s resources, we take the information in this audit very seriously,” said Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, Ph.D. “We acknowledge the need to take specific corrective actions noted in the report. It is a key priority to implement appropriate control and accountability measures, with specific consequences, for situations in which policies are not followed.” Okay, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, since you want to be a good steward and follow policies, how about refunding the money you spent on the retirement banquet? It's already been termed "gifting of public funds." Or, at least, commit...

So I popped over to a couple of sites to see what is being said on various issues. First, I looked at the PI coverage of the so-called SERVE idea for the teachers contract. I found the last sentence weak and wondered if there was a reason for it being so: Both sides said they hope to reach an agreement before classes begin. If they don't reach agreement, there will be a strike. I would suspect that to be BIG news and yet you wouldn't really reach that conclusion from that last sentence. Second, I checked in at the Alliance blog. (I'm not linking it because I am fairly disgusted at the direction they are taking.) They had written, a couple of days back, about SERVE. I commented that the Alliance keeps saying their community group has parents in it as if the Alliance is a parent organization. It is not; the Seattle Council PTSA is the most visible, hardest-working and largest parent group. I wrote that it is disingenuous for the Alliance to persist in their "pa...

As you may have noticed from the tv ads, school is going to start up soon in some areas of the country. Here, SPS will be starting up again on September 8th. (Although the Board calendar shows that Hawthorne and West Seattle Elementaries will start on August 31st.) We won't see the Board in action again until the August 18th Board meeting. That should definitely be interesting as I would expect them to say something, anything about the audit report. There will be many Board committee meetings this month but no Board member district meetings. (There is one Board workshop this month about Families and Education levy and budget goals.) I think one of the best places to hear the Board hash out the coming year will be at the Board retreat on September 11th. But it sure has gotten heated over at Harium Martin-Morris' blog on the issue of the audit. Harium asks one anonymous person to watch their tone (and I would agree). Don't ever post in anger even if you are angry...

KING-5 tv did a news story about one finding in the State Auditor's report. This was under the finding about the credit card usage specifically, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson's credit card. She charged $3800 on her card for catering a retirement party. The audit singled it out because it was "an inappropriate use of [procurement] cards" and it was over her daily per transaction limit of $1,000. Dr. Goodloe-Johnson was aware of these issues as she had signed an MOU acknowledging them before she got the card. Background: David Westberg of Local 609 wrote this to Harium on this subject: In an earlier time of accountability and eyes on the bottom line, the Chief Finance Officer wrote the following to the Senior Leadership Team on March 9, 2004; “As we continue to look for ways to save on costs, expenses on food, muffins, coffee, lunches, and snacks should be curtailed. In tight budget times, we need to save our limited resources to protect services to students, not e...

So finally, someone at the Times read the tea leaves, the writing on the wall, the liner notes and the Auditor's report. That someone is Lynne Varner and she wrote about it in her editorial column . Her frustration is palpable and I think she hits the right note in saying this is the public's money and the district needs to have a more careful and respectful attitude about it. From her column: The latest state audit of Seattle Public Schools didn't tell me anything I didn't already know: The district is stuck in a culture of lax indifference when it comes to taxpayers' money. Despite the last decade's phalanx of highly paid budget and money managers overseeing the district, few inroads have been made in transforming this culture. Interesting to note: The shoddy reporting and bookkeeping gets worse. Employees charged $250,000 in gas, not necessarily a problem considering the size of the district and the many employees who travel between schools. But em...

Fred Stephens, long-time director of district facilities, is leaving the district by the end of the month. I will be kind of sad to see Mr. Stephens go because I always felt he cared about the district even if he was not always able to see the buildings get the care they needed. It was not announced where he is going or what he will be doing. Bill Martin who is currently the head of BEX projects will be interim director. There is a bit of mystery about this resignation. Just last week Mr. Stephens had an argument in the district headquarters parking lot with an employee in his department. The police had to be called to escort the employee from the premises. The mystery is that this employee was overseeing the program that the recent state audit called out (the Small Business Development program). (To review, the district, based on Board policy, has a program to help small business owners make bids on district capital projects. This is in conjunction with other public enti...

(Update: I hadn't seen the Times write an article on the audit so I went searching. Apparently one was written, dated July 6th, which is weird because I didn't see it. It also isn't under "Education" or "Local" stories; I had to do a search to find it. Interesting how those beatific stories on the Superintendent are front and center and yet try to find any article that might criticize her.) I had been a little unhappy with Nina Shapiro over at the Weekly being baffled by why parents and teachers want the Superintendent to go. She seemed to ask, "Where's the beef?" Now she has a story that outlines the audit problems as well as how the district is creating "corrective action plans for each finding." From her article : One has to wonder how effective they will be, however. Another beef of the auditor's office was that the district had failed to correct problems it had already identified in past reports. She di...

I had written to the Board about the lack of engagement during this budget cycle. I had mentioned how Bellevue seemed eager to ask parents for help in guiding difficult budgeting choices. I heard back from Director Sherry Carr. She said that Bellevue had modeled Lake Washington and that they are both a best practices model. (She also noted that Bellevue had started its reform/improvement work over a decade ago and so is in a different place than Seattle.) June 10th is the next meeting for the Audit and Finance Committee. At that meeting they will be discussing improvements for the 2011-2012 budget cycle and it must include improved community engagement. She is interested in hearing from parents and community on how these improvements might work. Here are some suggested questions to help guide your answers: What about the process worked? What didn't work? What changes would you recommend? Would the process that Bellevue used work? Anything else? Here is a link for a r...

The Washington State Auditor's office released a report yesterday on the district's compliance with federal grant funding. What pops into my head constantly when this kind of thing appears is "We're in 2010 and we still have these issues." We have Moss-Adams report, the CAICEE report and now the State Auditor's report (again) and yet, it still happens. That it happens this regularly makes you wonder. From the audit: In our 2004 and 2007 audits, we notified District management of these requirements, and in our audit of fiscal year 2008 we reported noncompliance with federal procurement requirements. These conditions have not been resolved. These are grants for Special Education, Native American programs, and others. Some of the issue is that the district is not going out and getting bids or proposals from multiple vendors as is required and don't have records to support claims of doing so. From the audit: Special Education: We examined eigh...

The Times' editorial board weighed in this morning on the Native American overfunding issue. (I was wondering when the Times might cover this.) This has been going on longer than we thought. The district seems unable to follow federal and state guidelines. The problem with the program was discovered in 2007 when the federal Department of Education audited their Title VII grant, a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discrepancies in Seattle's program were brought to the district's attention, including the lack of a Native American parent-advisory council, a requirement of the grant. The district also did not, and still does not, have a system to verify students claiming membership in a federally recognized tribe. Washington state auditors, aware of the federal audit's findings, turned recently to the Seattle schools to see if it had complied with the federal audit's requests. It had not. An upcoming state audit report is expected to underscore cont...

The Audit and Finance Committee met yesterday afternoon and the first order of business was a review/explanation of the concerns raised in Meg Diaz's analysis of central administration expenses. The meeting was very well attended. The three members of the Committee were there: Steve Sundquist, Peter Maier, and Michael DeBell. No other Board members were in attendance. Neither of the two Board members-elect were there. Duggan Harman did most of the talking for the staff, but there was a whole lot of other staff people in the room. I saw Phyllis Fletcher from KUOW, Dick Lilly from Crosscut, and Lynne Varner from the Seattle Times. There were at least two other members of the media present. There were also a lot of community members at the meeting including Meg Diaz, myself, Mel, Joanna Cullen, and Dorothy. Please chime in if you were there. There were a couple of guys from the State Auditor's office there as well. For every concern that Meg raised in her analysis, the district st...

The BEX capital building program has an oversight committee which is volunteer and actually has some very knowledgeable folks serving on it. But naturally, if you only meet once a month and count on Facilities staff to give you information (both adequate and useful not to mention mostly true), good luck. So I hadn't gone in awhile and this is one of those meetings where not too many outsiders go so there was a lot of glancing in my direction. (One staff member asked me if I was at the right meeting.) A couple of committee members happen to remember me and told me (1) I should keep asking questions and (2) that historic rebuilds are killing the district. On the latter, this member said that either the state/city (whoever said a building is historic) should subsidize rebuilds if the building is to stay in use safely. The amount of problems that arise from these rebuilds (from surprises not in the original drawings/blueprints, if they even still exist) and their costs make for v...