It appears that we have struck a nerve which has sent the Aljazeera Café into a complete tizzy. I of course wear this as a badge of honor. It’s quite apparent that the empire is not happy with Dr. Fusco coming to town and they have released the hounds as expected.

So, what makes them so upset about this? Especially considering that Mr. Leavitt not so long ago was singing the praises of the Yankee Institute, which now he refers to as the “Swamp Yankee Institute” (See: Aljazeera Café article February 2007).

No matter, all of that is irrelevant. The Citizen Audit Committee will go forward whether they like it or not. I say let the chips fall where they may. We already have a number of people committed to the committee and subcommittees; many are people you will know and recognize as leaders in our community. There are openings for other people who would like to be involved. As said before we will not be deterred.

Below is an article outlining this same initiative done in Enfield, CT and its’ outcome. There is also a link at the bottom to direct you to the reports produced by these subcommittees which resulted in some very impressive changes for the benefit of the district and the children, as this is what it is all about. I very much look forward to wide participation in this very important initiative. Thank you.

Investigating Enfield's Educrats

When we last checked in with Armand Fusco, the retired superintendent who works tirelessly to expose waste and corruption in government schools, he had been asked by Enfield's Board of Education to train a "citizen audit committee" to investigate the district's fiscal performance.

Six months later, the volunteers Fusco helped to scrutinize 60 percent of the town's budget have delivered their findings. Not surprisingly, the team's four subcommittees — budget management; facilities, assets, and energy; teacher internships; and custodial services — confirmed much of what Fusco believes about school districts' lax stewardship of tax revenue.

The budget-management group uncovered the most disturbing deficiencies. Citizen-auditors were "surprised and shocked to learn how poorly documented the budget processes are. Without documented policies and procedures there is no way to hold anyone responsible for anything."
The district's financial-management software was, to be blunt, a joke. It is "awkward, outdated, and desperately needs to be able to produce its reports and dump data in an easily accessible electronic format." (Currently, reports can only be produced on paper.)
 
The procedure for handling a purchase order (PO) is undocumented, meaning "there is nothing to stop anyone from circumventing the process if they can and claiming that they did not know that they had to follow the PO process." In this case, technology isn't inadequate — it's nonexistent. POs are paper only, and thus the system is "awkward and fraught with opportunities to misplace copies or omit required data." Citizen auditors' solution? "Consider some form of electronic forms and tracking to execute the Purchase Order process. This is the 21st century even for Enfield. Time to go electronic."

The facilities, assets, and energy subcommittee vindicated Fusco's belief that government schools don't keep track of equipment very well. In the district's central office, two laptop computers couldn't be located — neither could a printer and a monitor. At Enrico Fermi High School, 22 percent of computers were "not found." (Where the heck are they?)
"Until a comprehensive audit of the entire system can be conducted," citizen-auditors recommended, the board of education should "postpone any further purchases of computer equipment."

Vehicles and cell phones are additional problems. The district does not have usage rules for either. Nor does it have policies for gasoline conservation. Electricity use is profligate — hallways and bathrooms lack sensor systems, vending machines run during non-school hours, and none of the district's 13 buildings has an energy-conservation strategy.

The teacher-internship subcommittee studied the feasibility of partnering with universities to provide graduate students to serve primarily as substitutes. Four out of the five Connecticut school districts surveyed that use such programs reported cost savings. (The fifth believes the program is a wash.) The subcommittee believes the savings from using interns as substitutes could be as much as 42 percent. But precise numbers are difficult to generate, given a now-familiar problem for Enfield's school district: "Data and reports on substitute usage were not readily available or easy to produce."

The final subcommittee, which examined custodians, found problems with accountability and efficiency. Neither is tracked, as evidenced by the maintenance division's work-order system, which "does not contain information as to who performed the job nor how much time the task required. We found it impossible to determine how busy this team is or how much of their particular skill is required. It is also difficult, at best, to try to determine how busy the regular custodians are, during the evening shift and during the summertime."

But Enfield's custodians are certainly well compensated for their difficult-to-measure employment. They earn well above the average wage for comparable work at the national and state level. Benefits are equally generous — up to 20 vacation days, 14 holidays, and 92 percent of employees' health and dental coverage is subsidized. The subcommittee found that outsourcing janitorial and maintenance tasks deserve serious consideration. Perhaps 25 to 40 percent of the district's $4 million budget for custodial services could be saved by contracting with a private-sector firm.

With no staff and less than six months to do their job, Enfield's citizen-auditors produced four remarkable reports. Their work is a victory for Enfield taxpayers as well as Armand Fusco. It's also a triumph for Sue Lavelli-Hozempa, an Enfield board of education member (and candidate for the state legislature) who initiated the project and bravely shepherded it to conclusion, despite baseless and mean-spirited opposition from defenders of the town's unionized education monopoly.

"This is the first of what we hope will be many more audit committees to come," says Lavelli-Hozempa.

Let's hope so.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and public-policy researcher. His website is www.dowdmuska.com

Link to Enfield's results- http://www.enfieldschools.org/board_of_education/boe_audit_committee/