One more example
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/225608/
NEWS FLASH: A long-time
secretary for the Pine Bluff School
District was arrested last week and charged with 1, 127 counts of felony forgery and theft. What ? One thousand, one hundred twenty-seven ? Yep, she’s accused of stealing $ 884, 712—How much ?—over seven years. (How long ?) One investigator called the scheme “brazen.” No kidding. A state auditor says the employee might have been caught much earlier, but that the safeguards in place didn’t prevent the theft because the school district was lax about enforcing them....
And that’s where we get in a huff.
As the state auditor noted, this story isn’t just about some rogue employee accused of trying to pull off The Big One. Instead, it’s more of the infuriating same: Too many school districts in Arkansas can’t be trusted with the taxpayers’ money.
Take it from Terry Hopson, a police detective in Pine Bluff who had the duty of unraveling this mess: “It was ridiculous how bold she got. She got caught because she got too greedy.”
Question: Would the suspect have been caught if she had been only sort-ofgreedy and sort-of-brazen ?
Last week, it was Pine Bluff where a school district was robbed blind. Not too long ago, it was Bald Knob that was in trouble. Its school district spent fast and loose—and the district wound up deep into debt. Now there’s word that a former superintendent at the school district in Hermitage improperly concealed spending $ 157, 866, including more than $ 91, 000 to a construction company that was owned by—who else?—a district executive. The list of school districts that have fallen into “fiscal distress” sometimes runs inside the paper without a byline. Which is a newspaper’s way of saying the matter at hand isn’t so much big news as sad routine.
It seems the scheme in Pine Bluff was sophisticated enough to slip past the state’s auditors, whose oversight of school districts can’t be complete. For a simple reason: Those folks have 245 districts to keep an eye on.
So here’s a question that auditors on the state level might pose to any state legislator willing to listen: Wouldn’t it be easier to keep an eye on the school districts if there were fewer districts to watch ?
One of the arguments in favor of consolidating school districts in Arkansas has been that fewer districts would mean less bureaucracy—which would mean savings for the state and more money for teachers, schools and students.
Now we have another example of why consolidation is a good idea. The fewer districts, the fewer superintendents to keep an eye on and hold accountable. And maybe even the fewer bank accounts, checkbooks, credit cards and secretaries to keep up with. And fewer safeguards to police.
With more consolidation, maybe more of the taxpayers’ money would actually go where it’s supposed to go—to the schools, the teachers, the classrooms and, best of all, for the benefit of the students. Remember them ?