State Auditor Shadrick Blanc issued the following statement.
A
partnership with the State Auditor has helped the Starkville Oktibbeha
School District (SOSD) identify ways it could spend more money inside
its classrooms. A report released by the State Auditor’s office
today shows the school district could save up to $5.3 million by
eliminating ineffective annual spending.
“The
Starkville Oktibbeha School District expressed interest in improving
their spending and operations,” said Auditor White, “and I was excited
to partner with them to tackle ineffective education
spending in Oktibbeha County.”
The Mississippi Office of the State Auditor
also partnered with the advanced data analytics firm GlimpseK12 for this performance audit.
GlimpseK12
used data provided by the district to compare SOSD expenditures to
other school districts from across the region and country. Highlights
from the report include:
·
Data
showed some software programs are underutilized by students and
teachers. These underutilized software licenses cost the district over
$175,000 each year.
·
The
custodial and maintenance costs per student are higher at SOSD than the
average for other school districts in the Southeast. Bringing these
costs in line with other similar schools
in the region could lead to a cost savings of up to $1.8 million
annually.
·
Auditors
noted SOSD has an opportunity to improve the bidding and purchasing
functions by implementing modern, data-driven standards like performance
measures and competitive bidding.
"Our school district has identified operational effectiveness as an essential component of the district's path to excellence," said Supt. Eddie Peasant. "Partnering with the State Auditor, we were able to analyze and examine costs to determine how we can improve our efforts to maximize financial resources."
“This
report shows the district has a great opportunity to shift additional
dollars to where they matter the most: teachers' salaries and
classroom-related costs,” said White.
This
performance audit is the third of three district-level audits announced
by Auditor White in June 2020. Previous reports from the Auditor’s
office on outside-the-classroom spending showed
ballooning outside-the-classroom spending around the state,
a look at how Mississippi’s outside-the-classroom spending compares to other states,
and a study of the priority given to administrative pay raises.
This new performance audit report can be found online at the Auditor’s website.
14 comments:
Your tax$$$ at work-
It was said before - at this rate for each district, he's going to find well over half a BILLION in savings that are possible, but where none of the recommendations will even happen.
While I'm all in for every school district spending funds wisely, I'm not at all sure this is a function of the State Department of Audit.
It's no more Shad White's responsibility to teach budgeting than it is for school systems to provide three meals and snacks and weekend meals.
If this is an identified need, let the private sector get involved.
Shot across their bow.
4:04, how about the highest paid in the U.S. MS Superintendent of Education making sure these are implemented? In fact, she should have identified the savings in the first place. Who hired/can fire this person?
In most of the state each classroom get over 300,000 per year. Where does this much money go?
Again, why no mention of out-of-control administrative positions and costs.
That's 2 audits where admin received a pass.
The grandstanding of Shad White is an apt description. He apparently wants to remain popular, while not really having to hold anyone accountable.
Just another MS insider carefully campaigning for the next election cycle, while accomplishing nothing except being in the news for "doing" something with no actual results.
Once he's audited all 144 districts and identified the "opportunity" to save over $550 billion, he'll step back and say he did his part - and nothing will have changed. We're #50! We're #50! MS ain't thrifty! But racism's still nifty!
Grandstanding or not, I would love to see how much financial waste he could find in the city of Jackson and JPS.
The “let the private sector do it” people are dumb. Have you never heard of Enron? Worldcomm? BP etc? They steal and screw up from time to time as well. And do you think they’d do it cheaper than the State Auditor WHO WE ARE ALREADY PAYING? Sometimes private sector works and sometimes govt works better.
Everybody:
Shad: Yippee! Yippee ki yay!! Shoot 'em up, y'all!
Everybody:
1:40 - Meanwhile, I'll ask that you provide your list of 'government working better' situations. I suggest you can't identify ONE situation in which government results exceed those of the private sector.
Take a break from calculating your wife's PERS benefits and accept my challenge.
It's not a State Auditor's job to hang around after an audit to advise and play the role of a paid consultant. His job is to perform investigations and run rabbit trails that lead to criminal charges. And if he can't find anything, tip his hat and leave. If the Department of Education wants to hire consultants and advisors, let them use a bit of the money that woman is blowing on contracts with her friends and associates for that purpose. This agency is more top heavy than any other and has plenty of money that could be used for this purpose.
“Ineffective annual spending” is also known as “theft”.
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