Forensic audit of Florida county's school budget raises questions
In the wake of the multimillion budget deficit that escaped the attention of Florida's Manatee County school district leadership for months, the community quickly focused on the backgrounds of the district's primary leaders.
"80 percent of my efforts have been countermeasures to prevent this on a daily basis," Boyer said Wednesday.
Position control will block the problems with salary calculations from even happening, Boyer said. Officials will not be able to add a position if it goes over budget, and will need 6 different phases of approval to do so.
Unbudgeted items are still at about $4.5 million, as the district reported in November. Boyer said. That number rises to $7 million if you count a 1 percent raise promised to teachers. "That's going to be the last thing that's going to be covered," Boyer said.
They're still looking for extra money. "We've had more than 25 departmental meetings," Boyer said. "We're going through everybody's budgets and scrubbing them."
He stresses that most student programs that were reportedly unbudgeted are funded. "Unbudgeted and unfunded are two different things," Boyer stresses. For example, he said, the IB programs that were unbudgeted this year are not unfunded -- state money supports these programs.
Still, the district is behind because of the crisis. Gayler said earlier this week that budget planning would have already began in a normal year.
In the meantime, school board members have expressed a desire for a superintendent who isn't going to be afraid to restructure administration to regain functionality.
"Within 10 weeks, we need to have a superintendent," school board Vice Chair Julie Aranibar said earlier this week. "An educational leader strong in finance who makes sure that all the people that are directors of the departments are performing ... and we have to have an audit that is functional."
The board has also made it clear that they want more information from auditors. Another meeting with Navigant will likely be scheduled in the future. And many believe clarity will be found in some of the documents not presented yet to the public.
"The community still doesn't have available the balance of the forensic auditors' report, which I asked be available seven days prior to their oral summary," school board member Dave "Watchdog" Miner said on Friday. "I am disappointed because now it appears it's going to be at least seven days after."
According to an email from Internal Auditor Ed Daugherty to the district Audit Committee, school attorney John Bowen and Trenam Kemker attorney Charley Harris are still working on how to distribute thousands of documents to the public in a manageable way, particularly electronically. They are also debating who will be the custodian of the records.
"I hope that all these documents that are being paid for by our community will be given more attention so that we don't have to wait much longer for their release," Miner said. "The issues prompting this investigation deserve this attention."
