With New Scandal, Seattle School District Extends Its "Money Pit" Brand

Unfortunate taglines, Exhibit A

Speaking of school pride, the Seattle Times has put together a major investigative series on the Seattle Public Schools, reporting that, "Seattle Public Schools spent up to $1.8 million on contract work that was never done or didn't benefit the district, triggering a secret criminal investigation into allegations of financial fraud."

Some $280,000 went for "services never provided," says Seattlepi.com, trying to get their oar in.

Critics of Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson, of which there are more every day, are heartened by headlines like: "Top school officials should have done more to supervise spending." In their view, that she appears unconnected with the alleged fraud is just as damning. Her lack of oversight into how the district was spending funds undermines her decision to put the school district through the huge disruption of school closure, on money-saving grounds. 

As the Times reports, though:

At the center is Silas Potter Jr., who managed the district's small-business program, which started as a way to help companies learn how to bid for district construction projects, but grew into an operation that spent up to $1 million a year, offered dozens of classes, and signed partnership agreements with other government agencies such as the city of Bellevue, the Port of Seattle and Tacoma Public Schools.

Potter reported to Fred Stephens, the district's former director of facilities and construction. Following an investigation (which was not disclosed to the school board), in spring 2009 Stephens revoked Potter's authority to award construction contracts. Stephens, who now works as deputy assistant secretary for administration U.S. Department of Commerce, wanted to fire Potter, but was told the findings didn't constitute "just cause." 

Blame-assessment is the immediate fall-out, with the school board outraged. They should be, because none of this news has brightened the prospects of the $231 million Families and Education levy. Supported by both Mayor McGinn and the Council's Tim Burgess, the levy is contaminated by the association, even though the funds raised would be spent by the city, not the school district. Burgess insists that "it’s full speed ahead on our process of evaluating the levy and taking a (Council) vote later in March."

"Full speed" has to be a relative term, in this context. 

In his campaign for mayor, McGinn actually brought up the idea of the city taking over Seattle Public Schools if management didn't improve. That's unlikely, but despite waves of reformers elected to the school board, the district continues to exhibit a deep, dangerous blindness to its own operations and their effectiveness. Misspent money can happen anywhere there's money enough to be misspent, but as of last August, the school district told me it couldn't easily provide data on class size, or even give a ratio of school enrollment to physical capacity.

This was astonishing to me, given that schools were in the process of being closed due to performance. As I wrote then: 

It also raises the question of how--when the district was closing schools last year because "there is currently too little classroom space in North Seattle to meet demand, but too much space in the Central, South, Southeast and West Seattle clusters"--it actually knew that. The district's "Capacity Management" page doesn't contain a single number or percentage related to the district's student capacity.

Personally, I found it hard to believe these numbers didn't, in fact, exist. But I feel a bit better knowing that the district has stonewalled the school board as well.