Town Meeting Members Want Full Audit Of School Finances

BURLINGTON, MA -- Twelve Burlington Town Meeting members co-sponsored a warrant to audit all of the Burlington Public School System's finances for the two-year period ended June 30. The $70,000 warrant item will be considered at Town Meeting scheduled for January 22 and comes after a pair of audits raised questions about the school system's oversight of accounts holding student activity funds.

The Town Meeting members that put the warrant on the agenda were Adam Senesi (Precinct 1), Gene Rossi (Precinct 2), Monica Faiella (Precinct 3), Joanne Frustaci (Precint 3), Gary Mercier (Precinct 3), Virginia Mooney (Precinct 4), Erin Ellis (Precinct 4), Patricia J. Angelo (Precinct 5), Richard Wing (Precinct 5), Ernest R. Zabolotny (Precinct 5), Elizabeth C. Hughes (Precinct 7), and Michelle M. Papagno (Precinct 7).

At its November 14 meeting, school committee members were pressured by several town meeting members to be more transparent after the two smaller audits raised questions about how the school was overseeing the student activity fund and the performing arts fund.

Among the findings in the audit of student activity accounts:

• Commissions from student photos were used to fund teacher parties and pay for gift cards.
• 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.

Among the findings in the audit of the music program, which is expected to be discussed at the school committee's meeting on December 19:

• 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.
• A cash box the department keeps to make change for tickets sold on the night of performances was not recorded on the town's general ledger, meaning "at some point in the past these funds were collected and not turned over to the Town Treasurer."
• 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 audit 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.

"I cannot tell you how mortifying this is," Joan Kennedy Contsant, a former town meeting member, said at the school committee's November 14 meeting. "If you cannot tell where cash has gone - if it's been mishandled, misplaced, lost or misappropriated -- you're getting into the realm of felonious conduct."

On Wednesday, Superintendent Eric Conti posted some documents on his blog and clarified some of the points that had been raised at the November 14 meeting. But town meeting members have maintained that the audit is not complete because, as noted in the report, school officials did not turn over a complete set of records to the independent auditing firm.

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Patch file photo.

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