From the city that brought you the flunking valedictorian: New Orleans had up to 27 months to fill out the paperwork for up to $15 million in grants from the federal government. Apparently, some educational bigwigs there are patting themselves on the back for losing only $1.7 million of it:
It is a shame that this kind of disastrous mismanagement is recurrent in the Orleans Parish system, which is failing students at many schools every day. And with many poor families to serve, any loss of federal Title I money -- intended for the education of children from poor families -- is a serious matter.
The U.S. Education Department reclaimed the $1.7 million because the New Orleans system didn't make plans to spend the money by federal deadlines. The money, about half of it from the Title I program, represented unspent federal allocations and grants to the school district dating to 1997 and 1998.
Ellenese Brooks-Simms, president of the Orleans Parish School Board, lamented the loss but said it could have been much worse. The new superintendent, Tony Amato, learned that the district had about $15 million available in federal and state grants, with deadlines fast approaching for allocating the money. He and his staff rescued most of the grants.
That doesn't excuse the system for its failings. Districts have up to 27 months to do the paperwork for Title I money. And the money can be used for a wide variety of purposes in a school...
Decades of bad judgment and political mismanagement...have left the Orleans Parish system with a reputation that will not go away quickly.
Further, the system isn't showing some basic appreciation for accountability. The board opposed, unsuccessfully, passage of a vital constitutional amendment this year that authorizes state agencies to take over failed schools.
More here, and especially here in this October MSNBC article- $100 million missing over four years? Seems that $1.7 mil that went back to the feds was only the tip of the iceberg:
For years the Orleans Parish school district denied requests to renovate, despite annual budgets of more than half a billion dollars — including $37 million from federal taxes.
Now an audit of district finances shows there was plenty of money, but in the kind of scandal the city is famous for, it was misappropriated — possibly stolen in amounts shocking even here.
Former New York School Superintendent Tony Amato was brought in this year to clean up the mess. He estimates the amount fleeced in just four years at more than $100 million. “You’re talking about money that was literally just hemorrhaging out of our system,” Amato says. “And money that could have been used to repair this school, maintain this school. And there are 125 schools in this city just like this school.”
The amount of money that simply disappeared from this school district over the past few years is staggering. Officials are still trying to figure out where it all went, but much of that money will never be recovered or accounted for.
The FBI, whose past investigations have sent Louisiana politicians to jail, is now looking into alleged crimes within the school district — including kickback schemes and employees siphoning off millions.
But auditors also blame bureaucratic incompetence. It turns out the district was paying $5,000 yearly health insurance premiums for 2,000 people who don’t work there. And it continued paying more than a thousand employees for months or years after they left the district.
Should "bureaucratic incompetence" of this magnitude result in less jail time than deliberate embezzlement would? I don't think so. Go, FBI.
Posted by kswygert at December 29, 2003 05:52 PM