It promises to be a hot time in the ol’ district Tuesday night, at least for TUSD junkies. At the Tuesday night board meeting, the financial report for the 2013-14 school year will be presented. According to Mark Stegeman’s constituent newsletter, the cash reserves — the amount left over to give the district some room to deal with unforeseen expenses — were about $10 million at the end of that school year, down from $14 million in cash reserves left by previous superintendent John Pedicone at the end of the 2012-13 school year. You can expect CFO Karla Soto to report that the cash reserves were significantly higher than Stegeman’s estimate.

You can take a look at the Annual Financial Report for the 2013-14 school year here. It’s way above my pay grade, so I won’t try to interpret it too closely. Any brave souls or CPAs out there, feel free to dig in.

The question is, if there’s a serious disagreement in the numbers, who should you believe, Mark Stegeman or H.T. Sanchez? The answer is, this isn’t about belief. Budgets aren’t religious documents. Let’s see what the numbers show and try to make a reasonably objective assessment of what they mean. Remember, it’s election season, and the spinmeisters are out in force on all sides. (I was planning to dress up as a spinmeister for Halloween, but I don’t know what they wear.)

Meanwhile, here’s a related, old TUSD financial situation which probably won’t come up at the meeting but is worth recalling when we’re talking about budgets and cash reserves. Remember about two years ago when John Pedicone was superintendent, the district said it was facing a $17 million deficit? Lots of schools were shut, but that didn’t close the gap, so all kinds of painful, draconian measures were taken to cut spending until the gap was closed.

And at the end of the school year, June, 2013, the district had cash reserves of $14 million. Got that? A $17 million deficit hole absolutely had to be plugged, then the district had a $14 million cash reserve at the end of the year. Once again, this is way above my pay grade, but I’m asking in case someone out there understands this better than I do. When Pedicone said there was a $17 million deficit, was he really saying, “The district needs to cut $17 million so it can preserve its $14 million cash reserve”? If he had said that out loud, I doubt many parents whose kids were at the schools on the chopping block would have said, “We have to close my child’s school so we can keep $14 million in case we need it for an emergency? I’m good with that.” I think it’s more likely they would have screamed, “WTF? We have a cash reserve to take care of an emergency, right? I’d say saving my kid’s school qualifies as an emergency!”

This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2014.

7 replies on “Expect Fireworks At The TUSD Board Meeting”

  1. It doesn’t matter. Why would you give these people more money?

    Maybe, just maybe the State was correct in withholding finances.

    My parents took my allowance away when they found out I wasted money.

    Where are the parents?

  2. I agree that TUSD should not get one more cent, however if we would have had an independent auditor , like Stegeman has asked for repeatedly, would any of this have happened ? I see now that Stegeman and Hicks are asking for a state auditor, good move , it wont cost the district anything and it will bring all this to light for the state. I also see that Grijalva and Foster are now going to ask for an auditor, change in position ? or did Grijalva realize her support of Sanchez has lost her the election and Foster could get recalled for her blind support for Grijalva. If you haven’t read the article in the star about Sanchez’s e-mails do so , there very in lighting, and even show his intent to misuse deseg. funding. Wake up Tucson Sanchez and Grijalva need to go.

  4. Brian: I doubt that Foster and Grijalva will ask for an INDEPENDENT auditor who reports to the Governing Board. They will ask for an “outside expert” (someone from somewhere in Texas) to come and examine the books and report to Sanchez. That is a waste of money. The Board needs its own internal auditor who reports only to the Governing Board. Sanchez and Grijalva will pull out all stops to prevent that from happening.

    If voters are content to let Sanchez and the Grijalva cabal continue to ruin TUSD they can vote for Safier’s picks….Grijalva and her good buddy Jen Darland. If voters are unhappy with TUSD’s wasteful spending on administration and worthless programs instead of in TUSD’s classrooms they can effect a change in leadership by voting to retain Mike Hicks…the person who did his job as a Board member and discovered the financial irregularities being done by Sanchez and enabled by Grijalva, Juarez and Foster. They could cast their second vote for Debe Campos-Fleenor or Betts Putnam-Hidalgo. These candidates are poles apart on the political spectrum, but both of them have shown a real commitment to TUSD students and both support hiring an independent auditor.

  6. The board needs to be on the alert. Adelita Grijalva will try to give any extra funds to La Raza, as well as buy more pro La Raza revolutionary textbooks that WTP got thrown out of our schools last yr.

  7. Rich Kronberg makes the following point in the Comments Section of the Arizona Daily Star:

    “….One way that school administrators hide money is to build a budget based on the
    number of full time equivalent (FTE) teachers the district should have. Multiply
    that by the average cost per teacher and that generates the cost of the teacher
    unit. If, however, the district does not hire full time staff for all its teaching
    positions…and TUSD has faild to fill all its teaching slots with full time
    teachers for quite a few years…that leaves a lot of money in the budget that
    will not be used to pay for teachers and is available to spend on what might, at
    best, be termed “fluff.” Unless the Governing Board actually knows the number of
    FTE employed by TUSD, it can easily be misled by the budgeted figures. What do
    you want to bet that the members of the Governing Board (with the possible
    exception of Dr. Stegeman) have no actual knowledge of how many TUSD classes are
    taught by a parade of substitutes instead of full time highly qualified
    teachers?…”

    There are approximately 180 Positions Posted on the TUSD Web Site. It needs to be determined if the Current Budget Estimates are a piece of “Financial Legerdemain” to hide the misuse of Public Monies and possible Fraud. Since Public Funds are involved, an immediate Audit by the State and Federal Government should be called for the TUSD Board.

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