93 cited in DISD inquiry (Dallas, Allen: credit card, purchase, school district)

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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-pcards_11met.ART.North.Edition1.439ded3.html (broken link)

93 cited in DISD inquiry

Report details 'systemic' problems with credit card program.

The Dallas Independent School District's examination into its now-defunct credit card program has ended with investigators filing detailed reports on 93 employees, including 44 principals and two assistant superintendents.

Of the 93, five to eight probably will be referred to law enforcement for prosecution, according to the chief investigator. Names of the remaining employees have been given to DISD to mete out punishment.

The numbers...

$20,000,000 a year in purchases
$1,000,000 cost of the 10 month long audit
20,000 approximate number of employees in DISD
5,000 purchases a month
1,400 credit card holders in the past four years
200 accounts audited (100 biggest plus those with $2500 in gift card or $1000 in department store purchases)
107 employees cleared of wrong doing
93 employees found to have broke spending rules or knew of others who did
50 employees who had left the district and investigators did not pursue
16 employees placed on leave
6 employees resigned or were fired
3 employees oversaw the program
2 employees placed on leave but reinstated
2 employees convicted of theft

"That 19,970 [employees] didn't [steal], that says something about this district," Board president Jack Lowe.

"I think it's a million-dollar waste of money. They're going to find a handful of people to pin it on." Allen Gwinn, community activist.

"There are things that have occurred that we're not proud of ... and we apologize. But, also, we have a much bigger mission here. Our mission here is to become the best urban district in the country by 2010. We have a lot of important work to do for the young people of this city." Michael Hinojosa, Superintendent.

"This was a car wreck waiting to happen," Paul Coggins, lead investigator.

"We figured given the time constraints and the budget restraints, we need to focus on" the most egregious offenders, Paul Coggins.

However well-intentioned, the program was "haphazard at best and sloppy in execution," Paul Coggins.

"In theory, there were three levels of supervision [over each purchase], but in practice there were none. Quite frankly, I was surprised we didn't find more [theft], given the utter lack of supervision." Paul Coggins.

"That wasn't done by accident. That was done intentionally." Paul Coggins, referring to the 100 cases where automatic messages to supervisors had been disabled.

DISD also may face issues from the miss use of federal grant money as well.

He also recommended that the district undertake an audit of its federal grant spending. Most of the credit card bills were paid with local taxes, but thousands of purchases were paid with federal grant money, the spending of which is regulated by tight government rules.

Last summer, The News examined receipts for more than $321,500 in credit card charges made in the 2005-06 school year in the district's two largest federally funded grant programs. Using government regulations as guides, The News found that about one-quarter of that spending appeared to violate government rules regarding the purchase of food, games and gifts.

Gifts, in fact, were a big problem for the district, Mr. Coggins' report says.

"This observation was supported by the frank admission of one [credit] card holder who stated that she was trained never to use 'the g word' in describing these purchases, because they were not gifts - they were 'incentives' ... such as in the case of 'holiday incentives' and 'retirement incentives,' " the report states.

I think it is good that the district took the issue seriously and looked into it once the story had been published. I am concerned that there were only 3 people assigned to oversee the program. Somewhere there was a breakdown in communication. Based on the number of purchases occurring each month, there should have been more people involved in oversight. Whether that's the fault of the manager or her superiors is uncertain. But it does appear that the individual supervisors were not giving the situation the review it needed.

[KewGee]

With all the adults in the world with such terrific values, how in the world can we question why the youth of today are the way they are? They have such marvelous role models.