Years of consultants, audits, warning signs not enough to raise a red flag. Really?

We have thrown a lot of numbers at you lately in our coverage of the financial mess that is Wayne County Public Schools.

And some of them have been pretty shocking.

So, it would be understandable that in the face of a massive deficit and mismanagement that seems to be getting more and more extensive, expensive and infuriating, the bigger picture might be a little harder to focus on.

Let’s take a step back and breathe it all in.

When you look at the WCPS financial debacle, the first thing that stands out is the dollars that changed hands — a lot of them.

A district that had a $7 million surplus four years ago now is nearly $3 million in the red — and was worried that it would not be able to make its June payroll or pay teachers their stipends because its expenses way overshot its revenues.

In fact, that same district was warning the community and its employees that it would likely need to cut staff and to increase class sizes to balance the budget — and that those cuts might also affect student course offerings.

Shocking, right? 

Well, thank goodness we got rid of the finance officer who “single-handedly” managed to sneak deficits, an unauthorized $3 million transfer to the general fund and irresponsible spending past his boss, the entire Central Office administrative team and the Board of Education before someone thought to ask — in June —  to look at the 2019 audit that was completed in November.

Whew. That’s a mouthful.

And it is also baloney. Can you say “scapegoat?”

There is no way that what was happening in this school district was a sudden revelation when the audit findings were presented to the BOE June 3. The former superintendent knew. You can bet on it.

And there is something else that just doesn’t add up.

Board Chairman Chris West has been on the school board since 2010.

We find it hard to believe that he was unaware that there is a yearly audit required for the school district. 

We think he knew. 

Why he did not speak up and why he supported rehiring the superintendent who was in charge of watching over that fund balance — well, that is a discussion for another day.

We also wonder what would have happened if there had not been such extensive coverage of the district’s financial woes. 

But there’s more.

It is also unlikely that West and other long-term board members did not know that the fund balance was sinking like a stone.

And if they didn’t, shame on them.

Only the most recently added members — Ven Faulk and Wade Leatham and possibly Dr. Joe Democko — can say that they did not know what the district’s financial picture was. They did, after all, just start looking at the numbers.

And if the astonishing claim that board members past and present, and the chairman, “did not know” that there were yearly audits and that the district’s finances were in serious trouble — well, you know what that means. Someone wasn’t doing his or her job.

And then there is the decision to hire School Operations Specialists and a pricey interim superintendent to clean up the mess — with the board’s equally pricey and well-connected out-of-town attorney advising.

All of those deals were done in a series of special meetings — and under questionable circumstances where N.C. Open Meetings Law was treated as though it didn’t really apply.

There are rules about how you hire contract labor — and what you can and cannot discuss in executive session — for a reason.

But sometimes, when you don’t want the public to hear the discussion or to be able to ask questions, you find reasons to have those exchanges in private and then come out into public session and vote.

We will have much more to say on that matter later.

But let’s start with this.

School Efficiency Consultants was hired in 2016 to do work for the district on a project-to-project basis. Only one contract exists — and that is for a 2017 salary study — but WCPS confirmed the district did business with the firm through December 2019. 

In the district’s most recent audit, it turns out that one of the areas where the audit firm dinged the district was in Central Office salaries.

Hmmm. 

So, until someone asked to look at the audit, no one knew administrative salaries were on hyperdrive? Not even after a salary study from three years ago that cost, at the very least, $18,000?

And more importantly, no one thought to ask why, if the district hired a consulting firm for a series of “projects,” the salary problem and runaway deficits were not discussed and addressed?

So, that would bring up another interesting question.

Since this consulting firm, recommended by the superintendent and charged with training that aforementioned finance officer, was there as a resource to assist with financial management, etc., why is the district in the red at all?

And if the superintendent did not know what the finance officer was doing — and as the interim boss told the board recently, no one on the Central Office team knew anything about budgets or how to manage one — one would think the board would be very careful about putting blind trust in another administrator or consultant.

Perhaps a few more questions should have been asked BEFORE a new consultant was hired — and the newest contract should have been with someone with no ties to the previous group of consultants so that we would get a fresh take on the district’s operations and financial picture.

Or not.

Bad decisions piled on top of bad decisions, made worse by secrecy and “not it” responsibility mean that there is something to be concerned about on Royall Avenue.

There are some board members who just got hit with a mess they had nothing to do with making, but the chairman is not one of them.

Cleaning this up means cleaning all of it up — and that means a super-close look at ALL expenses, ALL hires and ALL payments.

And we should also point out that paying $125,000 (and counting) more for an attorney than the WHOLE COUNTY pays for its legal team could have bought a few teachers. And $18,000 for a salary study that didn’t stop raise after raise for Dr. Michael Dunsmore and his “cabinet” could have paid for an instructional assistant for a child who needed extra help.

But that is what happens when you are spending someone else’s money — with no checks and balances.

And as we anxiously await the new budget to see how the district is going to get back in the black, we wonder how much cutting is going to be done at Central Office.

If the kids really are who matter, then the high-priced administrators and consultants need to go.

After all, isn’t that where all this started in the first place?