Other Districts Have Tougher Standards For School Finance Chief

BURLINGTON, MA -- As the Burlington school department faces pressure for hiring a director of operations without a degree in fiance, a quick review of the minimum education requirements for the equivalent position shows other school districts at least a bachelor's degree in finance and experience in business or municipal finance. Burlington Patch obtained job descriptions for the director of operations -- which typically oversees financial operations in a school district -- from Billerica, Lexington, Reading, Wakefield and Woburn.

Burlington was the only district of the six that did not require a degree in finance, experience overseeing a budget, or both. At the start of the school year Burlington hired former IT director Rob Cunha as director of operations. That job posting only required a bachelor's degree in computer science, a caveat that seemed to favor Cunha.

Lexington had the most stringent requirements for its Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Business Operations, requiring a master's degree in public administration, business, finance or a related field and 5 to 10 years of finance and budget experience. The district also requires the person who fills the position to hold a valid school business administration license and to be a Massachusetts Certified Public Purchasing Official.

Requirements in the other school districts included:

• A master's degree in accounting or a related field, as well as experience in school or municipal finance for the Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations in Woburn.
• In Reading, the district gives preference to candidates with a master's degree for its director of finance and operations. Reading also requires the person in that position to have prior experience as a school business administrator or other district level financial position, as well as a Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education SBO License.
• The Assistant Superintendent and Director of Finance and Operations in Billerica needs a degree in business, finance, public administration or related field including advanced coursework. The job candidate also needs to be certified by the state as an assistant superintendent or business manager.
• Wakefield requires its School Business Administrator to have a bachelor’s degree in business or public administration, and a master’s degree is preferred. The School Business Administrator also needs a Massachusetts certification as a School Business Administrator and must be Massachusetts certified as a Public Purchasing Officer.

The job posting that resulted in Cunha's hiring job called for 5-7 years of experience as a system's administrator in a "complex IT setting." On Tuesday, school committee members defended Cunha's hiring by district superintendent Eric Conti after a number of residents, parents and town meeting members questioned them during the public comment period of the committee's regular meeting.

"This is not a corporation. This is a school department, that works with people, that works with children, that works with parents and teachers," Chairman Thomas Murphy Jr. said. "You got to know the town and you got to know the people in the town. It's not just looking at a piece of paper and crossing out numbers...It's very discouraging for me to come in and hear people say some of the thing I heard the tail end of. It's not fair and in my opinion it's not called for."

Cunha replaced Craig Robinson, who also did not have a background in finance. Speakers at Tuesday's meeting said they were concerned that the district was downplaying the seriousness of a string of recent reports that have shown problems in the school system's financial oversight.

A pair of outside reviews of school spending in revolving accounts raised questions about school system financial oversight. Those reviews, which were conducted in August and have been discussed at recent school committee meetings, prompted a group of town meeting members to call for a complete audit of the school system's finances. Town meeting will consider that proposal on January 22.

Last month, Conti backed off a previous statement that he suspected no theft or wrongdoing as a cause of a series of problems recently uncovered in school spending. At the school committee's last meeting of 2017, Conti would not definitively say there had been theft or wrongdoing when asked by a school committee member. Earlier in the month, in a post on his blog, Conti said he had said he did not suspect any wrongdoing.

Among the findings in the audit of the music program:

• Tickets that were sold for cash on the day of the show were listed as "comp," or free tickets. The price those tickets were sold for was not recorded. The audit was unclear on whether or not receipts from those ticket sales were deposited into the account. On Tuesday, Conti outlined the changes that he said would prevent this problem in the future.
• The auditors could not ascertain whether some money from fees charged to students was deposited back into the fund.
• The four-show Burlington Community Concert Series lost between $35,000 and $40,000 in fiscal year 2017. On average, the shows generated $6,000 in ticket sales while paying $10,000 in talent fees, on top of hotel, meal and transportation expenses. "These losses are one of the main drivers of the Revolving Fund deficit," the report concluded.
• The district should not have paid for the deficit incurred for the concert series out of the fund, which is only to be used for extracurricular educational programs.

Among the findings in the report on the school district's student activity accounts:

• There was no policy in place to handle how teachers collect cash from students to accounts, which numbered as many as 10 per school.
• In 20 years, many of the accounts had never been reconciled and the checking accounts had never been balanced.
• The school committee failed to turn over all of the information Roselli, Clark and Associates needed to complete a comprehensive audit.

This week, school committee members said while they were concerned with the issues raised in the reports, they were confident in policies the district and Conti have adopted, including Cunha's hiring. That included a reorganization of the district's operations staff and the implementation policies based on the independent auditor's recommendations.

"At this point I have complete confidence in way we have our financial department set up," committee member Kristin A. Russo said.

More on this story:

• Burlington School Committee Pressured On Finances (1/10/2018)
• Burlington School Finance Job Posting Favored Internal Candidate(1/2/2018)
• Burlington Can't Rule Out Wrongdoing In School Account Deficits(12/22/2017)
• Burlington Superintendent: No Doubts About Faculty Honesty(12/12/2017)
• Fresh Produce Fed Deficit In Burlington Schools Cafeteria Account(12/11/2017)
• Town Meeting Members Want Full Audit Of School Finances(12/8/2017)
• Superintendent Responds To Audits Critical Of School Spending(12/6/2017)
• Few Answers From Incomplete Audit Of Burlington Music Program(12/5/2017)
• Audit Of Burlington Schools Student Funds Uncovers Lax Oversight(12/4/2017)

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Photo of Robert Cunha by Burlington Public Schools.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).