The vice president of the union that “represents” Stonington’s government-school custodians recently solicited suggestions about ways the district can save money.

He’ll get more than he can handle if Armand Fusco responds.

The retired superintendent is a one-man army in the war for sound school-district spending. In 2005, Fusco authored School Corruption: Betrayal of Children and the Public Trust, a sobering look at the cheating, waste, fraud, and mismanagement rampant in the nation’s government schools. Not content to document the problem and return to a quiet retirement, Fusco offered to help any individual or group motivated to bring best financial practices to education.

The leaders of Connecticut’s school monopoly passed. Instead of embracing Fusco’s offer to conduct workshops for their members, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents attacked. So did educrat unions.

Undaunted, Fusco pressed on. He spoke to taxpayer groups. He appeared on cable-access shows. He wrote opinion pieces. He wouldn’t go away.

And last year, a district finally accepted his offer. Susan Lavelli-Hozempa, a gutsy member of Enfield’s Board of Education, wrangled a party-line (all Republicans for, all Democrats against) approval of an audit committee comprised of citizens trained by Fusco to look for inefficiencies, oversights, and opportunities for savings.

Fusco believes that school districts suffer from a chronic condition: They’re too focused on maintaining the status quo, and not enough on finding the most cost-effective methods to teach students. That’s a common complaint of longtime observers of the education monopoly, who often note how districts appear immune from the transparency and accountability standards that are increasingly commonplace in the real world.

Enfield’s citizen-auditors confirmed many of Fusco’s suspicions. They were “surprised and shocked to learn how poorly documented the budget processes” were. The district’s financial-management software was pathetic. Its central office was missing two laptop computers. (At one high school, 22 percent of computers were “not found.”) Purchase-order procedures were undocumented, meaning there was “nothing to stop anyone from circumventing the process if they can and claiming that they did not know that they had to follow the … process.” There were no policies governing the use of vehicles and cell phones. Electricity was being wasted. The district paid more for substitutes than it would if it used teacher-interns. And no procedures were in place to track custodians’ performance, despite the substantially higher pay and benefits janitors received, compared to their private-sector counterparts.

In 2009, it’s Trumbull’s turn. The local taxpayer association has successfully lobbied for a committee similar to Enfield’s, and with the support of both the superintendent and chairman of the school board, Fusco is training a new crop of citizen-auditors.

“Not only did we get a great number of volunteers, but the quality of the volunteers we got is extremely high,” he observes. Trumbull’s group, mirroring Enfield’s, is comprised of many finance professionals, including five CPAs, six business analysts, and an auditor. The committee, which will be independent of the district but use school facilities and have a member of the board of education serve as a liaison, should be done with its work by June.

Terrified of change and desperate to keep their perks, Connecticut’s educrats will surely continue their petulant assault on Fusco. (In the words of one hysterical union boss, he’s an “anti-education zealot.”) But given the fiscal condition of Connecticut’s cities and towns, it’s tough to overlook the benefits of citizen-auditing school districts.

Southbury faces a $325,000 deficit this fiscal year. For Windham, the figure is $500,000 — and growing. Tolland faces a $300,000 shortfall. Norwich’s gap is estimated to be $530,000. Next fiscal year looks even bleaker. East Hartford’s mayor has asked department heads for a 5 percent cut in 2010. Cheshire thinks as much as $2.4 million in non-tax revenue (mostly state aid) will be absent from its budget. In December, Greenwich’s superintendent won approval of a budget that eliminates 25.5 certified staffers. And the aforementioned Stonington custodial union’s request for savings suggestions was offered in response to the proposal that the district’s educrats forego raises (4.75 percent for teachers, 3.5 percent for administrators, and 3 percent for others) in the next fiscal year.

If local-government pols and municipalities’ unelected officials are honesty concerned about both plugging holes in the public purse and lightening Nutmeggers’ property-tax burden, they’ll embrace Fuscoism. They’ll muster the courage to establish a process that permits outsiders — not district employees or sycophantic PTA members — to ask questions school systems won’t ask of themselves.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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