Kara Kenney, WRTV, Puts Spotlight on Decatur's School Audit

WRTV reporter, Kara Kenney, has turned a bright spotlight on the Decatur School District's recent audit. The State Board of Accounts audit of the district's books from July, 2007, through June, 2009, showed that they failed to get their fund balances to agree with their bank statements in any month during the two year period. See my blog entry "Decatur Schools Audit Shows Sloppy Bookkeeping".

Click here to read the article with an embedded video stream of last night's broadcast of the piece. The article has overlapping information and is not identical at all to the video. You can leave comments on this page.

I tried to find a way to embed the video here, but could not make it happen. If you go to this link, there is an option to post a link on your facebook page, on twitter, etc.

The video has a great interview with Natalie Coffey on this issue. And the interview with the State Board of Accounts Examiner, Bruce Hartman, is also informative. His final word on the subject is :

Hartman said members of the public have the ultimate oversight of schools' budgets, with their voice at public meetings and their vote.

"If (school leaders are) not doing the job, maybe someone else should be put in there to do the job," he said. "It's important for fiscal cash management to know what you've got and what you don't have. Failure to do that can really lead you to have some problems."

We are working on it Mr. Hartman. Thanks for all the work you do at the SBOA. I know I for one, appreciate it. And, thanks to Kara Kenney for the great reporting !