Recently, things like shaving half of your head or wearing clothes styled after Japanese street fashion have become popular. Unfortunately for the educational system, mismanaging school funds is the latest trend.
Instead of money going to better equipment for teachers to use or to dedicated teachers themselves, in Detroit, it is going to things like motorcycles, metal detectors, and unused Blackberry phones (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-05-detroit-schools_N.htm). A Houston news station revealed University of Houston’s administrators’ lavish spending habits – think visiting the Taj Mahal while meeting other educators in India, thousand dollar dinners, alcohol, the likes – all funded by college tuition (http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/13_undercover&id=6813747). What irks me is that all of this is going on WHILE we are in the middle of a recession and WHILE we are losing good teachers to other professions because teaching just doesn’t pay well enough.
While this may come down to the moral question of whether or not man is evil and selfish, I don’t believe much can be done about this phenomenon because with power corrupts. Whoever is in charge of financial decisions can be held accountable for the misuse of funds, but it is impossible to prevent future events like this from happening.
The fine line between spending for legitimate or illegitimate reasons is blurred. Purchasing metal detectors seems like a good thing to do in order to protect students from harm. The Detroit school district appeared to have good intentions with that. Dishing out some cash to administrators to discuss a school’s problems is fine. It certainly wasn’t a problem for the University of Houston. All in all, it’s a problem of moderation – something that cannot really be standardized.
The mismanagement of funds in Detroit schools was discovered by an audit. If schools are regularly audited and punishment for any lack of proper documentation of spending is enforced, perhaps the current situation will get better. Fiscal records should be made public. Schools should always be transparent in their actions because they are funded either by their students or by property taxes. School districts should not be allowed to make purchases without the consultation of the community through board meetings. As another option, districts and universities can create committees consisting of students, parents, staff, other interested citizens, and professional financial advisors.
But, in all honesty, I think this is a pointless article solely because there is no real solution to this problem because there is no way to enforce transparency. My suggestions are not entirely unique. These schools with mismanaged funds are outliers. I suppose we will have to make do with a bell curve…
---Sahifah Ansari---
