It appears the Hattiesburg School District is going broke or more likely, is already broke. Mississippi Superintendent of Education Carey Wright asked State Auditor Stacey Pickering to immediately investigate the district's finances. The general fund balance plummeted from $6.5 million in 2012 to $768,796 in 2015. The district also obtained a $7 million tax anticipation note in August 2015. The district has already spent $6 million. The HSD Superintendent and business manager resigned in December. Dr. Wright sent this letter to Mr. Pickering:
This picture tells how bad it really is. JPS needs to take lessons:
Click on image to enlarge. Credit: Hattiesburg Patriot |
Read the rest of the dismal info at this Hattiesburg Patriot post.
13 comments:
"Director of Parent and Community Involvement"
Yeah, that exists. Because a state employee - directing a department, no less - should make mention it's always a good idea to pay attention to one's offspring's education.
Looks like there are plenty of principals and directors.
That school district was once top notch. It is a dumpster fire now. There will be no money to get back from these people.
There's something rotten in HPSD. or at least, there used to be.
The former superintendent suddenly resigned shortly after WDAM discovered an "internal error" a contract to be awarded to a consulting firm that was not the lowest bidder. To make matters worse, the (now former superintendent) was on the board of directors of said consulting firm.
Maybe an "Administrative Personell List" should be published for every school district so we can plead for more funds for education. Who created this list, Hattiesburg or Dept of Education?
"Maybe an "Administrative Personell List" should be published for every school district so we can plead for more funds for education. Who created this list, Hattiesburg or Dept of Education?" ~ February 2, 2016 at 5:59 PM
I am going with 5:59pm, let's see the list for every city and county in the state.
I'm more impressed with the spelling of "Personnel".
...how about 'Administrative' right before Personnel.
I have seen "misspellings" like these before.
More than once I have seen financial reports titled with "misspellings" which are then posted on the internet and the "misspelling" are then made part of the url.
Occam says I should suspect that people can't spell, and that officials like school administrators and boards can't spell and/or do not care.
However; when the search engine won't find the document when the exact document title (spelled correctly) is searched, and I then assume the document is not available, only to find that it actually is hiding behind a misspelling or two, I start to wonder.
WDAM reported that former Superintendent Bacchus had some sort of continuing and long term relationship with a consulting company the school district hired to come up with a strategic plan for the district. Hattiesburg Schools hired P3 Strategies LLC to strategically plan for the amount of $219,000, so I wonder if I need to google "Hattiesburg Pubic School Destruct""Pee3 Stratergies LLC" and a few other combinations?
Words of wisdom from former Superintendent Baccus:
“I’m sure we, people always double check math,” Bacchus said. “Are you saying that we don’t make mistakes? No I can’t say that. No I’m not saying that we didn’t make mistakes, but as far as we knew, we thought it was correct.”
Then there's the unique value proposition which justifies almost anything:
Seven on Your Side noted in an interview with Bacchus that it could have been a $164,000 mistake for taxpayers if the district did that basic arithmetic incorrectly.
“You can always say that,” Bacchus said. “You know, everybody always thinks that education shouldn’t cost anything. That we should basically have people that do something for nothing when it comes to education. Many times, what you want, if you ask people to do something for you too that level that you want it, you have to pay for it unfortunately.”
Now they are out of money?
Amazing.
Can you post salaries and job positions of other like sized high schools?
It would be interesting to see how this equates with say Lee County or DeSoto County?
What is the racial makeup of the employees and administration vs. students?
Can't find this information?
8:52 a.m.: It had mixed demographics for a very long time. Had a demographic shift that started slowly in the mid 90's and accelerated in the late 90's, early 2000's. Now basically all black, 95% or so. Every bit as much a warzone as JPS.
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