Plainfielders will be interested in a big story the Ledger ran yesterday about financial audits of the Abbott District schools. (I held off 'til today, since I KNEW everyone was spending quality time with moms on Mother's Day...right?)
The audits covered the 2004 - 2006 school years, meaning the data is already from TWO TO FOUR YEARS OLD.
The Ledger's subhead points to a finding that 29% of expenditures -- as judged by the auditors -- were 'not reasonable'.
Digging into the story, we do find some REAL problems -- a couple of them, such as Pleasantville and Asbury Park involving probable criminal activity. Irvington and East Orange had large sums expended which were not covered by appropriate documentation or seemed excessive.
I do think it is fair to question some of the expenditures, even though some school administrators complained that the auditors didn't understand the 'school environment'. One question the story does NOT address is whether the Abbott districts are being held to a different standard from non-Abbott schools. That, presumably, would only be answered by a complete audit of ALL the school districts in the state -- not very likely, by my lights, and way too expensive to boot.
The only citation of Plainfield in the story concerns spending $504 for 144 students to spend time at a skating rink. The story cites it as a 'private rental'. But if you do the math, it comes down to $2.50 per person. What's unreasonable about that? What's unreasonable about a field trip to a skating rink?
I find the district's explanation somewhat harder to swallow, that it was --
a "meaningful and consistent learning experience," citing New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards for mathematics 4.1: "Students will have to judge speed, radius of the ring," explained the district."Did the students turn in papers, or was there a quiz on the math?
- Ledger: "Audits reveal waste in Abbott spending"
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2 comments:
If Plainfield handled the experience appropriately, accademically, it would be legitimate. As a former physics teacher, I yearly took students from some of the urban school districts in NJ to Physics' Day at Six Flaggs. There were before and after classroom experiences as well as problems to work on while at Six Flaggs and all of this was included in a Physics unit developed by science teachers and recognized by the NJ State Department of Education.
Your point is well-taken. But I was reacting to the notion that every single thing done must somehow be fitted into a conscious plan. That's the way that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia did things. I rebel against such organizing and justifying down to every last jot and tittle -- sometimes just having fun is fine. But of course there is the matter that the state chooses to question such things. And of course the district is put in the position of having to either say it was justified or it was unjustified -- the state doesn't allow for anything serious like just having fun.
-- Dan
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