www.state.nj.us/education
under the finance section.
Story by Trish G. Graber
TRENTON Some of the state's poorest school districts required by court order to receive extra state funding spent thousands of dollars on consultants, travel and sports-related festivities, according to audits of 27 Abbott districts released last week.
In Bridgeton, Cumberland County, school officials spent more than $10,000 to send staff to conferences, including some in Atlanta, Ohio, Orlando and San Diego. They paid a consultant, Salmon Ventures, $12,000 over three months for grant writing and to lobby state agencies.
nd the Bridgeton district paid $1,383 to send students to a Double Dutch jumprope competition in South Carolina, according to the audit conducted by KPMG LLP in New York.
In Phillipsburg School District, Warren County, officials used $15,085 to buy banners for their 100th anniversary football game and their 100th game with their archrival in Easton, Pa.
The district also paid a consultant $50,000 to get input from the community on a new high school, an audit by Livingston-based Wiss & Company LLP showed.
In other areas, Asbury Park paid $4,280 for golf shirts and jackets for athletic coaches. Gloucester City paid $6,116 for rain jackets for the football team.
All of the expenditures, except travel, were flagged by auditors who looked at information from the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 school years in 27 of the state's Abbott Districts, released last week by the Department of Education.
But many of the practices questioned may soon come to an end.
The department used the findings to develop new rules for school districts and to shape the job description of the new executive county superintendents, in an attempt to enhance the accountability of all districts.
State education officials said the new safeguards, when they are in place, will make it much less likely that some of the expenditures questioned in the audits will occur again.
"More important than some of the individual expenditures is the fact that some of those audits identified that in many of those districts they didn't have internal controls that could catch these things before they happened," said DOE spokeswoman Kathryn Forsyth. "(The regulations) are going to stop some of these practices by code."
The proposed rules give executive county superintendents the ability to comb through district budgets and eliminate non-instructional expenditures. They make it easier for state officials to withhold state aid if they believe a district is wasting money.
They also provide guidelines for school officials in areas where the state saw excessive spending: Travel, meal reimbursements, professional services and public relations.
For example, the guidelines prohibit overnight stays for school officials if a conference is held within 50 miles of their home and limit the number of school officials that can take out-of-state trips together.
The state is also proposing to prohibit jobs within districts solely for public relations purposes and to crack down on professional service contracting.
District superintendents said the new regulations will be helpful to provide parameters for spending, but they defended their districts' past purchases.
"I didn't think we were out of line with what we were doing," said Phillipsburg's Acting Superintendent George Chando, who was not head of the district during the years the expenditures took place.
In a written response to the audit, district officials said the banners were bought for a football game aired nationally by ESPN, which paid a fee for the broadcast. They also noted that the football program brought in $72,564 during the 2004-2005 school year and $76,608 during the 2005-2006 school year.
Phillipsburg School District also contended that the $50,000 paid to the consultant was not only to collect data but to help the district prepare for a referendum needed for a new school delayed indefinitely after the bankruptcy of the Schools Construction Corporation.
In his case, Bridgeton Superintendent Victor Gilson said the travel by staff was necessary for professional development and the Double Dutch competition was a way to keep students engaged in an area where gangs are prevalent.
The consultant, he said, paid for itself many times over by bringing in money for the reconstruction of the district's stadium and track, including $196,000 from federal officials. To date, he said, the district has raised $1.4 million for the $6 million project.
Gilson said he would not consider any of the expenditures out of order.
He added that many non-Abbotts spend money on the same things, only those districts are not operating under the state's microscope.
"When I was the superintendent of a non-Abbott, we did all these things," said Gilson, the former superintendent in Dennis Township in Cape May County. "To me, it's a very positive story for Bridgeton ... the purpose of these audits were to find dirt and all they found was a little bit of dust."
The audits finalize the work required by a Supreme Court order to audit all 31 Abbott school districts those the state is required to allocate extra funding to make up for economic shortfalls. Audits in the others, Camden, Jersey City, Newark and Paterson, were released last year.
The audits of all 31 Abbott districts can be found at www.state.nj.us/education under the finance section.
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