School Chair: Board, Administration, Community Must Work Together

EAST HAVEN, CT - In the first full Board of Education meeting since a report was issued that was highly critical of how the East Haven school system has paid its bills the board’s new chairperson tried to reassure fellow members and the community that mistakes made by the administration will be corrected.

A long awaited forensic audit of how the East Haven school system pays its bill found numerous issues and makes several recommended changes to try and fix the problems.

The firm of the Shipman and Goodwin was hired by the East Haven school board when it was discovered during the fiscal year that ended in June of 2016, the school board spent $918,765 more than its allotted budgeted of $47.2 million.

The report criticized the school system for several lax accounting procedures, including poor invoicing, poor accounting follow-up procedures, inconsistent billing, lost work orders, improper outside rental procedures, accounting problems with the Little Jackets program, tuition charge issues, etc.”

The report, compiled by Thomas Mooney, concluded: "The forensics analysis identified significant control deficiencies in various district practices. Based on this analysis, I recommend that the Administration review these recommendations and adopt and enforce appropriate new control procedures as recommended.

"Given the board's oversight role, I further recommend that the Adminstration periodically report to the board on the status of the actions it is taking to implement the recommendations of the forensic accountants.
"While the lack of controls identified by the accountants is of great concern, their recommendations and appropriate follow-up by the Administration should be of great benefit to the East Haven Public Schools."

At the September 25th Board of Education meeting, Chairperson Michele DeLucia read a statement before the start of the meeting, which said in part:

“We are currently implementing changes in both operations and academics.

“The reason I joined the BOE was to assist in helping the students in this district receive a better education; as Chair I now have that opportunity.

“This BOE must work together with not only the district, but with our entire community. It is my hope that we can build a trusting relationship based on transparency, open communication and constructive input. We fully recognize that progression needs to be made, fortunately we are currently in a position to make great strides in doing so. Just as we will continue to implement new strategies and measures in operations, I look forward to doing so with Curriculum and Instruction.

DeLucia continued: “We have an Assistant Superintendent who has the experience and passion to do just that, increasing academic growth progress. We also have a Superintendent that will support and encourage those initiatives. As long as the Board shows both of them the same support and encouragement by providing the requested resources, and trust in their expert knowledge and judgement, we can really make a difference.

“However, we need the community to join us in this initiative as well. I am hoping that in the near future we will be able to begin with the parent focus groups I spoke of previously, to hear what their
concerns are and also share what it is they can do to help their children reach their full academic potential.

“In fact, I met with our new Assistant Superintendent, Jennifer Murrihy, a few weeks ago about putting together a task force. I also informed her that there will be a new requirement of having regular updates at each meeting. I would like to ask that the Assistant Superintendent hold a workshop sometime next
month to present the Board with some of the strategies she plans to implement, along
with a timeline.

DeLucia concluded:

“We must remember that our responsibility at the board level is to:
*Request new strategies to be developed, accompanied by a timeline of implementation;
*To be informed of the criteria that will be used to measure academic growth and listen to what will be positive, as well as realistic, growth progress in an effort to set new standards;
*Ensure that the district staff continues to enforce new initiatives to meet the standards set by the board and that they be held accountable for doing so.”