Thursday, August 05, 2010

Tomfoolery in CCSD, Part II

Thursday's headline:

Board to consider two tax options

McGinley supports 6-year option for building projects

Posted by Babbie at 10:14 AM
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's more bait and switch from CCSD. This is what 40 years of dumbing down public education has done in Charleston County. Give the voters a choice of bad or very bad. Tell them if they don't vote like the choices, then the alternative is very, very bad. That way CCSD gets to rip off the taxpayers and rob our school one more time.

There is an alternative, but it takes a thinking majority to pull it off. VOTE NO to an 8-year sales tax. VOTE NO to a 5-year sales tax. VOTE NO to school board candidates who will raise property taxes. VOTE YES to ordering a complete audit of the school financing system to eliminate waste and recover lost assets squandered by the administration over the last ten years.

VOTE NO on everything presented by the administration until a complete and independent audit is conducted.

This isn't the same as what CCSD calls internal audits nor is it the same as the annual reports by CPA's hired by CCSD and limited to records CCSD allows them to see. Some states require every 5-10 years a complete investigation of every govenmental groups that uses public funds. SC doesn't, unfortunately. It's called a forensic audit and it's designed to provide a truly objective review including double checking the competence of the management (...do we really need 16 new school buildings & is the cost of bus transportation really that high?) How else can CCSD maintain a high level of public trust? I'm sorry but self designed and pre-graded performance reviews just don't give many of us the warm fuzzies about "excellence [being] our standard". It's not too much to ask for a 2nd opinion when this much money and even one more year of school failures are at stake.

How long has it been since CCSD had a forensic audit of its books and operations anyway? Thirty years or more? One scaled down version was limited to cell phones back in 2005, I think. When it was finished, it allowed the district to save over 1/3 of its more than $2 million annually by eliminating waste and fraud found being committed largely by senior staff members.

The cost of that audit was paid for out of funds that were recovered. It didn't cost taxpayers a dime and the saving were multiplied each year its recommendations to cut the waste and block the fraud continued to be followed. What if this kind of review was applied to the entire system? I don't think CCSD would need another tax increase for at least the next 10 years based on the waste elimination and asset recovery this kind of audit would give us. Of course, there are probably some administrators who have personal reasons for not wanting this kind of audit. They also want us to vote yes and not ask any more questions. We should VOTE NO to renewing their contracts, too.

If the past history and performance of CCSD is any indication, VOTE NO to everything until McGinley and the board VOTE YES to go forward with a forensic audit.

1:26 PM
Babbie said...

Amen!

7:36 PM
Alex Peronneau said...

I've seen the proposed text of the ballot question which will be voted on by the school board on Monday. It was drafted by Superintendent McGinley and her staff. The ballot question as she has worded it gives a complete list of projects the new tax is supposed to cover. It's an ambitious list to say the least. Some would say it is a wish list drawn up and motivated more by political interests than by an understanding of critical needs.

It is more than odd that despite the recommendations of expensive engineering reports already paid for, the superintendent has decided to do it her way. According to the ballot question as it is now written, voters are being asked to spend millions more on work the engineers didn't require. Why are some schools shown as "Rebuilding and equipping" when the engineering reports specifically said some of these same schools could be retrofitted and renovated far more quickly and with less money.

I would be interested to hear just who will question the superintendent without making it look like political posturing. Hard and direct questions are needed with this much at stake. No softball questions, please.

2:50 PM
D20 said...

Some ordinary citizens have already read Dr. McGinley's draft of what she gave board members earlier this week. Copies have been released to the press but so far there have been no comments from the media.
From my reading of the document, I see another unfortunate example of how the superintendent is driving the board. Her method appears to depend on disseminating misinformation and reordering agendas until she gets the 5 vote majority she needs. The reversal of the board’s original votes to go slow on closing downtown schools is a prime example. She can now go as fast as she wants.
The current board's acquiescence is turning out to be just as bad as, if not worse than, the school board's attempt at micromanagement in the 1990's. The current superintendent isn’t just running the schools. She’s proving to be quite resourceful in how she runs the board as well. After only 6 years in Charleston, she could be described as politically savvy. She’s frequently been seen as rather clumsy in her treatment of individuals and community groups, too. This may be her undoing, because as they say, you can’t fool all the people all the time.
The latest example of this ambiguous approach to school district management is her attempt to threaten taxpayers with voting for a sales tax or risk facing dire financial consequences. She has implied that if the sales tax is voted down, voters will get a property tax increase anyway. Neither one is as inevitable as the good doctor would have us believe. What she also isn’t telling us is that even with a new sales tax, we could still see a property tax increase in the future.
More to the point, the wording of the sales tax ballot question illustrates how she’s not leaving policy to the board. If the board puts its rubber stamp to this ballot question without some serious questions of its own, the process will prove she's doing it all. I would seem the board as a whole remains in the dark. The voters need to be much better informed before November, even if some of our school board representatives aren’t.

3:40 PM

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