by David “Dr. Word” Safier A Google news search for “McCain + ranch” yielded about 20 “McCain is heading to his ranch this weekend” stories. But McCain doesn’t have a ranch, any more than George Bush does. I looked up a number of definitions for “ranch.” This one is typical: “A Ranch is an area … Read more
by David Safier (TASL) Arizona’s appeals court handed down an important ruling — that a 2006 state law giving state money to private schools for the education of foster children and children with disabilities is unconstitutional. To me, the concept is very simple. Be generous with public money in support of public schools. Use private … Read more
by David Safier
(TASL) It’s amazing what you can learn when you attend an open meeting of a TUSD committee. Thursday I was the sole observer at the Tucson School Board’s Audit Committee meeting. Here’s what I found out:
• About $2 million in Fixed Assets — items whose value is somewhere between $500-1000 or higher — went missing from various sites — read, schools — around the district last year.
• The number of items missing varied wildly from school to school. One high school reported something like 500 of these high value items were missing. Another high school reported 6.
• For the past 17 years, this issue has not been looked at carefully by the District. The losses have been reported, then basically filed away.
• It’s unclear where the buck stopped, so to speak. The inventory lists came in to Asset Management, but whether A.M. sat on them, or whether they were reported to higher authorities and nothing was done, cannot be known unless the District looks into the matter.
The losses were discussed in the outside District Management Audit which was finished earlier this year and got a lot of press for getting the figures on the savings for school closures completely wrong. The Fixed Asset Management section begins on page 3-59. The missing items were mainly electronics stuff — computers, cameras, camcorders, projectors, etc. — though one Gator Tractor, 4×2, valued at $5,228, was listed.
According to the Audit Committee, the total value of the District’s fixed assets items is about $74 million, which means we’re talking about something in the order of a 2.5% loss. I don’t know how that ranks, whether it is high or low for school districts in general. But I do know if there are huge discrepancies between the number of items lost at different schools, that should immediately send up a red flag, and someone should figure out what’s going on. Maybe there’s a good reason why some schools appear to lose more items than others, but ignoring the problem won’t answer the troubling questions.
The TUSD Board meets today, Friday, to review the outside audit at 3:30pm in the Badger Room, Tucson Magnet High School, 400 S. Second Ave. The Audit Committee said it plans to submit a report about these fixed assets issues to the Board, but I don’t know if the report will be in the Board’s hands or if that item is on the agenda.
(Conflicted Emotions Disclosure below the fold.)
by David Safier This falls into the “Damn, I wish I wrote that!” category. Nancy McCallion, a third grade teacher in Tucson, published a terrific op ed in today’s Star: Fight social promotion with aides in classroom. Here’s the passage that’s worth the price of admission: Teachers promote students because they don’t think retention will … Read more
by David Safier Yesterday I wrote a question to Tom Horne during a live chat on the Star website. His answer, I wrote in a post, gave me the impression that he is OK with the idea that more students will drop out if we end social promotion. Horne disagrees with my conclusion. He put … Read more