Shirking responsibility
A recently released audit of Laurel Highlands School District’s accounts showed the school board spent $2.1 million more last school term than it had budgeted. The audit confirmation of the plummeting red ink isn’t news. The school board finally recognized that it had sunk to new lows a few months ago and petitioned the courts to be permitted to borrow nearly $3 million to pay off debts.
But as we have repeatedly said this is a situation that the board never should have allowed to happen. And the school directors still seem to want to place the blame elsewhere and have a convenient scapegoat in its retired business manager.
However, budgets aren’t created in a vacuum, although the auditing firm of McClure & Wolf implied that Laurel Highlands did just such a thing. Rather than look at past practices and develop a realistic budget based on a historic record of revenues and expenses, numbers were plugged in to paint a rosy picture that balanced on paper. That it counted a fund balance that didn’t exist or called for line items, such as salaries, that were $1 million less than the previous year apparently didn’t catch the eye of board members. These men and women are the ones who approved this budget.
They aren’t neophytes to the process and should have demanded answers. And directors should have realized throughout the fiscal year that creating programs and hiring people who weren’t included in the spending plan would add up to deficit spending.
To the board’s credit it instituted belt tightening for this school term and has stuck to the spending plan. But district taxpayers are still on the hook for paying off a $3 million bond that is the equivalent of an individual running up credit card bills far beyond his means.
It’s way past time for individual board members to own up to their responsibility in allowing this to happen. Soon enough the primary will roll around, and voters are going to want to know why they weren’t watching the money.