The proposal would have codified a practice that has been going on for some time. Officially, the Superintendent was only allowed to transfer $10,000 in the case of an emergency. Fund transfers were handled once a year, in June, at the end of the budget year to redistribute, what Board member Ryan Kennedy called, "surplus funds."
The motion would have allowed the transfer of $10,000 at the Superintendent's discretion, and would have allowed a transfer of $350,000 on an emergency basis. The motion would also extend the regular supervised transfers from once in June to three times annually in January, April and June.
Board members Shiela Daniels, Renee Johnson-Thornton and Corinne Gill protested the change in policy because it would have allowed the superintendent too much discretion to transfer without Board oversight.
"I think if we adopt this policy, we rescind our authority," Daniels said.
"Our major responsibility is the expenditure of funds," Gill said. "And we should do that very diligently."
"I think this will give us more authority," Board member Sally Boske said. "It gives us three times a year when we can transfer."
Board member William Grady indicated that the new motion was only putting into effect a policy which has been practiced for years.
"I find that the old written policy is ineffective, inefficient and happily ignored," Grady said, noting that the new policy would reflect what is, in actuality practiced regularly. "Our practice has been effective and efficient."
Comments on the Audit
Both Budget and Finance Committee Chair Jay Keiser, and Board Vice-chair Bill Boyd said that they had seen a preliminary version of the annual audit conducted at the Board of Education. The audit, which is due to be released by the end of December, is controversial because of claims of irregularities in the handling of Board of Education funds.
"We've seen preliminary results of the audit and their is nothing serious in that audit," Keiser said.
"I think there were unsubstantiated allegations," Boyd said after viewing the BOE and the city audit.
Piling On the Executive Sessions
There were two executive sessions noted on tonight's Board of Education agenda, one to discuss "pending litigation," and one to discuss union negotiations. They called a brief public session to add an additional executive session to the agenda. Sheila Daniels protested the addition, but was voted down and the board went into executive session for a third time. Daniels left the meeting before the final executive session began.
When the Board cleared the room for the initial executive session they then invited Police Chief Patrick McMahon to enter with Sargent Mike Marino to discuss SRO's (School Resource Officers). There is no pending litigation involving the SRO's. On his departure from the meeting Acting Chief McMahon would not confirm or deny a discussion of SRO's, but when questioned after the executive session Vice Chair Boyd, who was chairing the meeting in the absence of Chair Ted Raczka admitted that they had discussed SRO's.
"I guess there was some confusion," Boyd said. "Pending litigation was listed on the agenda, but we discussed SRO's."
When he was informed that discussing something other than pending litigation was illegal under Freedom of Information laws, he was encouraged not to answer by his colleague William Brady.
'I didn't make the agenda," Boyd said apologetically.
This reporter informed the remaining members of the Board that he intended to file a complaint with the Freedom of Information commission.
Bullying Topic of Public Session
Once again, bullying in school was the main topic of discussion in the public session. Cheryl Miller gave an impassioned speech about what she calls an injustice that was done to her son Aaron, who was expelled from school after being found in possession of a knife. She indicated that he had been cleared of charges in court.
Alexa McCain also made another appearance claiming that her grandaughter has been consistently harassed and bullied on the bus to school and at Woodrow Wilson Middle School.
"Now I ask you to feel & imagine this" McCain said. "You walk to and from the bus while constantly watching for stalkers, you sit on the bus, face front always ignoring the sneers, the name calling and stuff being thrown at you. And worse of all, constantly wondering everyday if today you're going to be hurt once you get to school.
McCain said that neither administrators at the school or the Central Office have been responsive to her pleas for help.
8 comments:
Congratulations to Daniels, Johnson-Thornton and Gill for bringing a little sanity back to the Board of Ed. Grady said they should change the policy because the one they have now is "happily ignored." Is he serious? That's like saying we should make bank robbery legal because people rob banks anyway.
Allowing Haynes and Frechette to spend up to $10,000 any time they want, as many times as they want, with no review or approval is a slap in the face to all the taxpayers who have to actually come up with the money.
I think this is a really important issue. The Board is supposed to return surplus funds to the city at the end of each year, but if they are transferring funds around between accounts, and some of those lines are also receiving outside grant funds, it makes everything more muddy.
Was the vote Boske, Keiser, Boyd and Grady in favor of expanding the Superintendent's authority, and Kennedy, Johnson-Thornton, Gill and Daniels against?
Was there a typo in the article? Was the proposal to let the Superintendent transfer $10,000 3 times a year, and $350,000 in case of emergencies or is that a typo and was it $35,000?
I do think that it makes sense to allow minor transfers, as we do now. And the value of money does change over time and maybe the old system was impractical. What do other towns with similar budgets do?
But it sounds like the argument was that the Superintendent was not following procedure. Grady says, the rules are not being followed now, so he advocates changing the rules. Strange.
BRING BACK THE BUS MONITORS!!!!! I have 2 boys in elementary school and the bullying is already starting! Bus monitors would also be a job creation chance.
It is really important that the board be accountable to the residents of Middletown. They have no pressure to do that if they are allowed to go into executive session anytime they want. There are very specific rules that guide when a public body can go into executive session, and they can't use it to talk about issues they just don't want us to hear.
That's not legal and I hope the EYE does file a complaint. The board's lack of accountability to the people and disregard for the law is absurd.
I attended last night's BOE meeting and want to thank those members of the BOE who voted down the proposed policy change for transfers. During the discussion of the policy change, an example was used of transfering between math teacher and language arts teacher salaries as necessary in the case of retirements or vacancies and hiring of replacements. This would be transfering between line items under the certified salary OBJECT CODE. From my reading of the proposed change to the policy, the new policy would have allowed changes between OBJECT CODES, such as transferring funds between salaries and copier expenses, not just between individual lines for teachers.
Also, reference was made to the BOE budget being available on their website. I however have been unable to find a line item budget there. I can find a budget by object code but have never been able to actually see a line item budget. Their website does show a listing of transfers for June 30th between individual line items so one would assume that such a budget does exist but is not available to the public.
This is a break thru! BOE now can no longer use "found" money or take moneyfrom student funds to create positions at their wim. This corruption has been hard for the public to understand but I am so glad the mayor perservered and the board put a stop to this.
Linda; I agree with you. There is no accountability or transparancy in how the BoE budget is spent or what amount is designated for each line item. In fact what are the line items. I'm willing to bet that even the BoE members don't know.
Good job Daniels, Johnson-Thornton, Gill, and Kennedy to stop this ridiculous power grab by Mr. Frechette. How anyone could vote for this is beyond me.
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