Tavares, FL - May 5, 2014
Update May 6 - The Daily Commercial's Livi Stanford wrote a good article on this issue here:
http://www.dailycommercial.com/news/article_69b8347a-f60f-52af-8f67-bfb0a8621331.html
2nd Update - May 6th 5pm: The Orlando Sentinel published excerpts from the CRI report below:
My original May 5th article and opinions you WON'T find in the Daily Commercial (The Orlando Sentinel has stopped most coverage of Lake County schools):
Today (May 5th), the Lake County School District had a 1pm workshop, which means they discuss several items, but can't vote or make official decisions. This is where the good stuff occurs - not at the evening meetings.
This is a shorter, edited version of a summary I sent to FiscalRangers readers:
- The School Board today had several important things on the Workshop agenda, and some were postponed. The agenda is attached (but items 3.04, 3.06 & 3.07 were postponed). I was at the meeting and recorded it on video but it may take 1-2 days to upload it.
Download the Agenda 2014 05 05
The agenda items that seemed important to me were:
- Agenda item 3.01 - CRI Report – An independent audit firm reviewed class size reduction problems at the schools. (See CRI report attached). They came up with a list of what to me are management failures and lack of administration action. They sent out 2818 anonymous surveys using Survey Monkey to teachers and staff at the County schools and 1517 (less than 50%) replied. One question was whether they were asked to sign class size reduction reports that were inaccurate, and 136 replied that had happened to them. The committee that decided the questions was run by the Superintendant, and magically, they did not ask for the name of the person who ordered the respondent to sign an inaccurate report. This clearly was to me a whitewash to avoid naming names of principals and other administrators who falsified or instructed others to falsify class size reports. The report is attached – it was just distributed so I have not had time to read it. The Board requested Supt. Susan Moxley to create an action plan with a timeline to implement the changes recommended. I will write up more details on this later this week after tomorrow’s noon LCSD Audit Committee meeting when the CRI will be discussed again.
Here is the CRI report on class size reduction:
Download 2014-05-05 CRI-report
- Agenda item 3.02 – Renewal of one penny sales tax - a long discussion ensued about what to do about supporting an upcoming public vote in 2015 to approve the extension of the existing one penny sales tax and the existing split of 1/3 schools, 1/3 cities and 1/3 county. This was a workshop so they could not vote on the issue, but it seemed a clear consensus was to support the extension of the existing 1/3 method and not go for the separate ½ cents tax available to the schools. It should be on a future agenda for a vote. However, there was strong consensus to then take a stand to get “fully funded” (led by Bill Mathias and Rosanne Brandeburg) by whatever “model” is decided. That could be a request to re-implement impact fees at 100% or other discussed methods left for future meetings. I think the Board has reached critical mass to not let this drop any longer and push for “full funding”. One factor is requests from Chambers of Commerce (South Lake, especially – the others are kinda asleep on this, in my opinion) and cities to implement programs that benefit economic development by Chambers and cities, and full funding is seen as a way to make that happen. For instance, some groups want School sports facilities upgraded and open to the public, but they don’t say how it would be funded.
- Agenda 3.05 – Maintenance Operational Audit – This had been presented at a recent LCSD Audit Committee meeting, and Tom Mock, the Internal Audit Director presented the same Powerpoint (attached – or you can get it at the LCSD Board Docs agenda for today) at this meeting . Mock estimated that the School Board could save about $1-million over three years by actually managing the school maintenance operations with real data analysis and taking action in about 10 areas ranging from outsourcing parts inventory to actually tracking details to determine where costs are excessive . The joke was that workers didn't even do a safety check on their trucks, but would hope their vehicle would just start each morning since the trucks were so old. To me, as a former corporate internal auditor, all the items described indicate clear mis-management of maintenance operations. When you hear that the 100 person staff doesn’t track actual costs of maintaining and running over 100 “white fleet” vehicles used to travel to schools to do repairs and maintenance, or that time records show less than 50% of the day was spent at sites actually doing repairs, you should be questioning why senior management did not detect and resolve these items years earlier. As one regular attendee told me “When I managed three manufacturing plants, if I failed to do those things, I would have been fired…”. (More later on this report also).
Here is a copy of the Internal Audit Report on School Maintenance operations (note: There is NO executive summary, only the Powerpoint):
Download T 305 Maintenance Operational audit presentation Audit Committee April 22nd
In my opinion , both the audit reports above justify the public opinion that government wastes more than they save by poor management. At some point, the Board should get tired of all these fiscal fiascos and reach the point where some heads should roll (and senior heads, not the guys in the trenches who were never asked to collect and evaluate data). It is clear that if the Superintendant doesn't understand the need for best business practices, she needs a no-nonsense, analytical Deputy Administrator (manager) who can manage by reports rather than just guess. When I was in Iraq, I worked with the US State Dept. and they had Country Ambassadors who were front people dealing with soft public issues, but the number two, the DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission), was a tight fisted, analytical, no-nonsense operations guy, not a demoted Principal or person who deals in vague generalities.
Another way to improve School District management is to replace Board members who don’t have business background and don’t understand or demand sound business practices to protect the taxpayer dollar.
As I have said in the past, staff monitors all sorts of tracking data on students to identify learning problems, but there is NO tracking of operational costs – just spend until you run out of money. A taxpayer might ask why they should re-elect any Board member or approve renewing of any tax when there is no professional management of operations.
I made video tapes of the audit report presentations and will share them on my FiscalRangers Facebook page and FiscalRangersFlorida YouTube account later this week.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, is another LCSD Audit Committee meeting at LCSD at noon (to 2pm) at the District Administration building in the portable in back of the main building. They will further discuss the Class Size Reduction report, and next year’s budget for the internal audit department.
ALSO, if you want to see the Lake County School District 5 candidates in a public forum (Incumbent Kyleen Fischer and two challengers: Nancy Muenzmay and Stephanie Luke), visit the WIN (Women Impacting the Nation) School District 5 candidate forum tomorrow night, Tuesday, May 6th, 2014 at 7pm at the Lakeside Inn in Mound Dora, FL.
Vance Jochim
