Wasted
How many times have we heard from school district administrators that the problems in the public education system are the result of inadequate funding?
Yet as a parent or community member, you’ve seen the superintendent and administrators waste money.
- They hire their friends or family for newly created and unecessary positions.
- They redecorate their offices.
- They carry fancy gadgets that they don’t know how to use.
- They sell surplus toilet paper because they claim it doesn’t fit their new toilet paper holders.
- They even return unused federal dollars intended to be spent on poor kids
Wasted will be an ongoing discussion topic on this site intended to help school district administrators make better budgeting decisions.
We’ll do this by exposing school system financial waste (your tax dollars). Hopefully, district staff will take note and make the changes necessary to eliminate the waste.
That way, the money saved can be spent where it has the most impact.
Who knows maybe we could help Portland Public Schools save enough money to provide working fire safety systems in all of its schools (not just the ones in good neighborhoods).
Here’s one example of waste: Recently KATU news pointed out that PPS spent $79,247.56 renting hotel space for Administrator Meetings while some PPS buildings sat empty. The Portland school district could have held their administrator meetings in the empty buildings.
PPS spokesman Matt Shelby defended the use of hotels for the meetings saying that the cost was just a small part of the district’s overall budget.
What do you think? Was that a good use of your tax dollars?
What kinds of waste have you seen in the public school system?
4 comments
Spending money on hotel conference rooms is indefensible while buildings sit empty. It may be must a small part of the overall budget, but it’s about the cost of a senior teacher, benefits and all. And speaking of creating positions, what’s with all the director-level people in HR? What do they do all day? How about all those directors and managers in PR? You could staff a couple schools with the money spent on unnecessary staff at BESC.
At our school in N. PDX, we are excited when the PTA auction raises $25,000. Who cares if the $80,000 is a small portion of the budget? The money could have used in any number of ways to actually help students.
Use the empty buildings and have a potluck! For crying out loud it is a recession and folks all over are going to have to get used to doing more with less.
We raised $1000 at our school last year and thought we had just hung the moon until I got a look at what other schools raise….
We don’t raise any money at our school, but depend on charity to help make life for our families a little bit more bearable especially around the holiday season. Yes, I like the idea of the administrators having pot lucks for their meetings, or better yet, have a few less meetings. I would like to know what they have to talk about every week. We need them in the building.
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