For four years I have gone to Board meetings and workshops of the School District, and given public input, sent emails, and posted ideas on this blog how the School District and the Board could improve management systems to ensure better efficiency, economy and effectiveness using techniques used by much smaller businesses.
For the last few weeks, I have made recommendations ignored by the CFO and the Superintendent to provide transparency over budget discussions by providing online or printed copies of the specific budget documents to be discussed at workshops.
CFO MacLeod, with or without the knowledge of Superintendent Moxley, has consistently ignored my requests, and she is known for never responding to public records requests from others.
Last week, I gave them half a hurray for posting online documents in the "Board Docs" section for some agenda items, but the CFO once again did not provide requested links to the specific department documents to be discussed in the budget updates during workshops.
I even sent more specific details to one Board member, who said the links would be provided. But, today I looked at the Board Docs online agenda system HERE for the April 9th School Board Workshop and found that for the budget update, the CFO only provided a link to the CFO's "Preliminary Budget Worksheet HERE, which is ALL the budget documents and there was no description of which ones would be discussed at tomorrow's Board meeting. Normally, department heads will also bring in presentations, and they were not linked either.
I consider this to be intentional act to prevent the public, and even the candidates running from office, from knowing which specific documents will be discussed in budget workshops. There should be a list on the Board docs page ON THE AGENDA that lists the specific departments or budget sections that will be discussed and would include the exact documents given to the Board by both the CFO and the Department heads.
But, for about the fourth time, that wasn't done. The staff does not seem to be able to understand how to ensure that the public can follow workshop and Board meetings, and this is one example.
So, it is clear to me that the Administration is stalling or hiding something, and is unwilling to provide the public with proper documentation on the budget process.
And, since I have suggested this several times, the Board seems to be ignoring the issue or doesn't understand the budgets themselves.
So, without adequate transparency, I will not waste any more time trying to provide suggestions for improvement, but will have to resort to a more assertive public investigation approach designed to ferret out information that will embarrass the administration or Board.
We need better Board members that will not put up with these games, and who will ensure budget discussion data is public.
Note: It is my opinion that most managers in the School District are well meaning, very smart and work very hard, and I enjoy talking issues with them, but the CFO's lack of transparency for budgets and the lack of performance metrics by department makes it hard for anyone on the outside to determine their effectiveness or that their work is credible, or that Board budget decisions are credible.
Thus:
- We taxpayers can no longer afford ANY elected candidates who have only worked in government agencies and don't know how to develop performance metrics, and think that management is only ensuring you don't spend all your budget before the end of the year.
- We taxpayers no longer can afford elected candidates who do not understand budgeting and are not forceful in demanding businesslike performance metric systems which are then made public.
- Teachers are being held accountable for their student grades and will soon move to the merit system, but the Administration needs to develop similar performance metrics for their own activities using more modern program budgeting techniques and full transparency. I will start finding examples and compare them to LCSD practices.
For an example of weak performance criteria, see my next posting.
Vance Jochim
