THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509010262
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
The All's-Well-That-Ends-Well School of Accounting seems to work well for years, then bam! The bottom line drops out of the black, and the line items above it get real complicated. Virginia Beach public schools spent more than half a billion dollars in the past two fiscal years and came up short in both, demonstrating boldly that if you don't mind individual accounts, you lose count overall. And your customers lose confidence, not to mention your bond raters.
``How did this happen?'' Chief Financial Officer Mordecai Smith asks in one of the memos excerpted at right, a sampling of intriguing snippets circulating among School Board and City Council this week. It reads to me as though they - the schools' administration and board - figured that with $340 million in the pot somebody'd find the money somewhere to offset ADM errors or hire unbudgeted teachers or engage a recruiting firm. But as often as the Faucette administration moved the shells around, even a con would lose track of the peas.
Taxpayers deserve to know how this system broke and who broke it - meaning a full, independent audit - and who will fix it and how. They already wonder about the '95-'96 budget: For starters, it projects more than $13 million in federal aid, the second-highest amount schools never got. And this is just the operating budget: When school opens Tuesday, the spotlight will turn to the capital budget's school additions, renovations and repairs.
A report to City Council in July, confirmed by a quick check with schools, is largely a litany of unavoidable (?) misfortunes that add up to more time and money than schools allotted or parents expected.
Interim superintendent Jim Pughsley has seen the system at its worst. A man who first time before Council answers simply, ``I understand your question and the answer is yes,'' sounds like he's doing his best to improve it. by CNB