I haven't posted any entries on this topic yet, so I guess I'll have to explain it from the beginning.
Gabby attends a small "country" high school, located pretty much in the middle of several hundred acres of chicken farms. Technically, we are in the bigger city school district, but I have chosen NOT to put Gabby in the big high school. I know my daughter.....she will get lost in the system and fall between the cracks. The district we live in has a high school that is overflowing with students. It is way too crowded (they only allow 3 foreign exchange students a year there because there is no room for them, and NOBODY who lives outside the district is ever allowed to transfer in!) These teachers are the 2nd or 3rd highest paid in the state (the highest paid teachers are the ones in the district right next to ours!) I'm sure the education is not bad (for a public school), but I just don't like the fact that the classrooms have something like a 35-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio. I want my daughter in a small school, where teachers can give her more one-on-one attention.
Flash forward to Gabby's little "country" high school: It seems her school had a bookkeeper who was, ummmmmmm, not too good with numbers. OK, she was good with numbers when it came to writing her own paycheck, but not when it came to writing anybody else's. Or when it came time to pay the bills. Or when it came time to deposit any money in the bank account. Yes, it seems this bookkeeper was depositing school funds into her own bank account instead of the school's account. It also seems that she gave herself an undocumented raise. This "raise" came out of everybody else's paychecks, a couple of dollars here and there. At last count, this bookkeeper managed to pocket $41,000 of the school's and other teachers' money before anybody noticed.
Then somebody noticed.
Somebody alerted somebody else, who alerted somebody else.....until an audit was ordered.
Then an announcement is made: The high school is in serious fiscal distress and may need to be shut down.
The bookkeeper quickly resigned. Then the superintendant was suspended until further notice. After all the investigations and audits and everything else was done and over with, the bookkeeper was arrested on criminal charges and the superintendant was fired. As I later found out, this bookkeeper just happened to be the mother of Gabby's ex-boyfriend.
So for several weeks, we had no idea what was going to happen with Gabby's school. Would it stay open or would it shut down? If it shuts down, where will Gabby go to school? If it stays open, will the quality of education be affected? The questions were endless as we tried to figure out what was going to happen. We found out that the school had a debt of close to $600,000 and it needed at least $300,000 to remain open. They received an anonymous donation of $100,000 to help towards the debt. The kids held fundraisers. The principal begged to the best of his ability. Meetings were held. Donations were solicited. The final meeting was held on July 31. This meeting would be the final meeting before a decision was made as to whether or not our school would stay open. And now the verdict is in.
The state has stepped in and agreed to have mercy on the district. They will keep our school open for at least one more year, but no guarantees after that. The state will take over and run everything. Certain "middleman" positions have been eliminated and the school leaders report directly to the state, instead of certain boardmembers like they used to. Most of the sports programs will be eliminated, in an effort to save money. Two of the four teachers who quit will be replaced, but the other two will not be. Gabby is a little bit upset. She wanted the school to close down because she wants to start attending a bigger high school. What she doesn't realize is that now I have plenty time to look for another small, possibly a private school for next year, in the event that her school is required to close its doors permanently. I like where she's at right now. I like her high school, for the most part. All things considered, it is the best place for her right now. I guess I need to start working on a back-up plan, though, because a lot can happen in a year.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
What a shame! Aren't you glad that is Gabby's EX-boyfriend now?
I actually had a client whose bookkeeper we suspected was charging personal items to business credit cards, etc. We brought it to the owners' attention, but none of the owners wanted to confront her about it. I think they finally changed some things, and they gave her less access to all of the money. Who knows how much she was actually pocketing, AND they were still very profitable!
Yes, I am very glad he Gabby's EX. I never did like the boy. Never met his mother, but I've never liked him, so there's definitely no tears lost on my part!
It's amazing what dishonest bookkeepers, and just dishonest people in general, can get away with. My father was in a similar situation. He is a retired cop and was hired by a bar owner to catch a suspected bartender or stealing money from him. My dad went in several times, posing as a customer, until he was able to figure out how the bartender was stealing so much money. It was a pretty elaborate scheme between two of the bartenders (this was a very upscale bar) and it took my dad a couple of weeks to figure out how they were doing it. Once he did, he explained to the bar owner exactly what was happening and what these bartenders were doing. After the bar owner found out what ws going on, he still didn't fire the bartenders, but let them keep their jobs and let them continue to work together. My dad never did understand that.
That is very odd...that the bar owner actually hired him to investigate, but yet, he never did fire them. I never understand how people can live with themselves. The guilt would just be so overwhelming for me.
Post a Comment