Huntley School District – Will Board Leave $200,000 on the Table?

One of the findings of Huntley School District 158’s forensic audit was that unnamed past and maybe still administrators received in the neighborhood of $200,000 in cash benefits for which there was no evidence of board approval.

They were called “cash in lieu of” benefits, supposedly, but not always, paid because an administrator’s spouse had her or his own health benefits elsewhere.

The key to the dispute is that the administrators pretty much decided to hand out the benefits themselves.

The school board, if in the loop, did not leave a paper trail of approval.

Mary Rakoczy, a reporter with Pioneer Press, started her story last week with

“District 158 School Board member Larry Snow told officials that current and former administrators who received excess payments should return the cash.”

“I think we have an instance or two with married individuals who get cash in lieu,” the reporter later quoted board member Tony Quagliano.

That means some administrators both receive health benefits for their spouses, but also received a cash benefit for not having taken the benefits.

Does that sound lame or what?

Do you get 100% fully paid for family health care benefits (medical and dental) and in addition for receiving it, your company gives you $5,000 in cash as a “benefit” for taking the benefits?

If you are single and receive free medical and dental coverage, does your employer pay you an extra $5,000 because you are single and not married?

District 158 administrators have called doing this a “benefit.”

Neither this “benefit” nor the cash payments were in the administrators’ contracts.

Should the Huntley School Board just let bygones be bygones or get the money back so they could hire a couple more teachers or buy whatever supplies $200,000 can purchase?

Quagliano apparently thinks they should not have to pay the money back.

“They thought they were receiving benefit in good faith,” the story says.

School board vice chairman Shawn Green, according to the story,

said the recent forensic audit found nothing fraudulent about the cash in lieu benefits in the report.

“I don’t think people should have to pay back anything based on that,” he said.


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