October 21, 2008

Background:

The Texas Education Agency in a limited audit found that 43% of Federal Funds audited had been misspent by Cleburne ISD. The district had to repay $362,000 dollars. A Monitor has now been appointed for CISD, paid $75 per hour by CISD, for as long as TEA chooses. Although administrators hope there will be no further audits, TEA says they may still do more complete audits. That would probably result in more money having to be repaid, as well as the expense of the audit.

No charges have been filed by CISD on those who misspent the money. Instead of being punished, those responsible were rewarded by being paid for staying at home. One administrator is still being paid while not working today. The former financial officer is still employed with different duties at his full salary of $103,000 per year.

Here is Harold Gentry's opinion of the situation.

To Audit or Not to Audit…That is the Question

by Harold Gentry

Let me explain the situation as I see it, being one of the district’s biggest critics. The problem we are now left with is “no accountability for their actions”, which was the whole reason for this exercise.
The former district administrators were shown their errors from their own records, and they denied it up until the day the final TEA report was released. Still some cling to the old ways even today.
The school board denied it, and after much embarrassment, a few still hold onto their denial of any involvement in the misspending or their approval of it.

The children who have passed through the system have suffered the most from the misspending of federal funds because they did not get the education they were promised. The taxpayer has had to share the burden of the expense because it’s their dollars that fund the public education system.
More audits are needed to determine all those who were involved who currently remain in the Cleburne public school system. Once that has been determined, then those who have caused this great waste of local, state and federal funds should have to share in restitution of the funds in proportion to what they approved or misspent.

The sticking point here is that those responsible have not been forced to be accountable for their actions. Without forced accountability, the TEA can have all the investigations they want, issue all the preliminary reports they want, issue all the final reports they want, make districts repay all they want, impose all the sanctions they want, send all the monitors they want, but the misspending will only continue. Why? Because no one is being held accountable.

Education in Texas is broken (not just in Cleburne). Educators and their lobbyists continue to beat the drum for more public school funding. If nobody makes abusers accountable, then they can throw all the taxpayer money in the world at it, and the education system will still be broken. Why? Because no one is being held accountable. There are no penalties on the persons who misspent the money.

Everyone at Cleburne ISD so far has been given a get-out-of-jail-free card because of their term contracts. We have paid and are still paying some to this day who were involved, when they should be paying restitution or be in jail. But educators find it hard to back a rule that might one day come back to bite them, so the protection continues and the wasted dollars continually go out the door, and education remains broken.

Taxpayers, the recent $700 billion dollar bailout is nothing compared to the bailout that has been going on in education far longer than the financial crisis we are facing today. Until educators are held accountable, the system will continue to waste taxpayer dollars and cheat children out of the education they should get.

Why? Because no one is being held accountable.