McHenry County Blog

Where?

You won’t be surprised to find out this is about Huntley School District 158.

Those were the numbers that were talked about as errors as a result of the 2007 audit.

If you think an audit reassures residents that a school district financial numbers are officially correct, think again.

First, if you were a resident who actually went to the meeting, thinking you would get a copy of the auditor’s report so you could read along with the questions being asked by board members, largely by school board member Larry Snow, think again.

No copies of the report were available to the public.

Not online.

Not in person.

No where.

So much for transparency.

Expenses were incorrectly shown in the 2007 audit, admitted to as an error by Paul Thurman who represented the audit firm of Evans, Marshall & Pease, P.C. I assume he is a Certified Public Accountant.

Add to this property tax revenue of $600,246–inflated–and registration fees that didn’t belong in 2007, this added up to $1,531,406.

How much in registration fees didn’t belong in 2007?

Well, that would be $641,478.

That’s a lot of registration fees.

There were a couple of more “stunners,” starting with the first question asked by Snow.

It turns out the Auditor had over $10 million on the books as “Construction in Progress.”

Snow asked how this could be when the Marlowe school expansion has been done for well over a year?

This is the second school year the expansion is actually being used.

Huntley administrators said the school was done.

The auditor said he had documentation from someone saying it wasn’t, but didn’t have it with him.

Superintendent John Burkey looked rather perturbed.

Probably because no one on his staff reviewed the auditor’s report between Friday when they got it and the following Thursday, the night of the board meeting.

Snow asked the auditor about internal controls and what he found.

The auditor said he found the district overpaid the state more than $150,000 in July for the Teachers Retirement System.

This happened when the payroll supervisor miscalculated the amount to be paid, and apparently just sent it in. No one in the District knew there was an overpayment until the auditor caught it.

One person doing this with no approval process or anyone checking the work, I would say this qualifies as an internal controls’ violation.

Then the auditor said the same thing happened in June as well. That time it was apparently only $75,000 that was overpaid.

When Snow asked whether the auditor used the internal controls assessment done by former Comptroller Stacie Talbert, Thurman was very clear.

The outside auditor said he had never seen the report or been given a copy.

Talbert’s December 2007 report was a scathing evaluation. Obviously Huntley administrators didn’t want the audit firm to be looking too closely at what hadn’t been corrected.

Board member Aileen Seedorf asked if this is November and the overpayments were discovered in August, then why is this being brought to light only at a public meeting now?

Good question.

Is there a conspiracy of silence still going on in District 158?

You betcha and it was obvious how administrators were caught “knowing,” but not telling. Members of the board majority would not have deliberately withheld that information, would they?

Why would you inflate the financial results in a year you are negotiating a teachers’ contract?

I believe Snow expressed less than a thank you when he said the auditor made negotiating the contract more difficult not less difficult with fund balances inflated by $1.5 million

Part 2 tomorrow.

= = = = =
At the top you can see teachers, including one shy one, picketing in front of Marlowe Elementary School.

Where?

You won’t be surprised to find out this is about Huntley School District 158.

Those were the numbers that were talked about as errors as a result of the 2007 audit.

If you think an audit reassures residents that a school district financial numbers are officially correct, think again.

First, if you were a resident who actually went to the meeting, thinking you would get a copy of the auditor’s report so you could read along with the questions being asked by board members, largely by school board member Larry Snow, think again.

No copies of the report were available to the public.

Not online.

Not in person.

No where.

So much for transparency.

Expenses were incorrectly shown in the 2007 audit, admitted to as an error by Paul Thurman who represented the audit firm of Evans, Marshall & Pease, P.C. I assume he is a Certified Public Accountant.

Add to this property tax revenue of $600,246–inflated–and registration fees that didn’t belong in 2007, this added up to $1,531,406.

How much in registration fees didn’t belong in 2007?

Well, that would be $641,478.

That’s a lot of registration fees.

There were a couple of more “stunners,” starting with the first question asked by Snow.

It turns out the Auditor had over $10 million on the books as “Construction in Progress.”

Snow asked how this could be when the Marlowe school expansion has been done for well over a year?

This is the second school year the expansion is actually being used.

Huntley administrators said the school was done.

The auditor said he had documentation from someone saying it wasn’t, but didn’t have it with him.

Superintendent John Burkey looked rather perturbed.

Probably because no one on his staff reviewed the auditor’s report between Friday when they got it and the following Thursday, the night of the board meeting.

Snow asked the auditor about internal controls and what he found.

The auditor said he found the district overpaid the state more than $150,000 in July for the Teachers Retirement System.

This happened when the payroll supervisor miscalculated the amount to be paid, and apparently just sent it in. No one in the District knew there was an overpayment until the auditor caught it.

One person doing this with no approval process or anyone checking the work, I would say this qualifies as an internal controls’ violation.

Then the auditor said the same thing happened in June as well. That time it was apparently only $75,000 that was overpaid.

When Snow asked whether the auditor used the internal controls assessment done by former Comptroller Stacie Talbert, Thurman was very clear.

The outside auditor said he had never seen the report or been given a copy.

Talbert’s December 2007 report was a scathing evaluation. Obviously Huntley administrators didn’t want the audit firm to be looking too closely at what hadn’t been corrected.

Board member Aileen Seedorf asked if this is November and the overpayments were discovered in August, then why is this being brought to light only at a public meeting now?

Good question.

Is there a conspiracy of silence still going on in District 158?

You betcha and it was obvious how administrators were caught “knowing,” but not telling. Members of the board majority would not have deliberately withheld that information, would they?

Why would you inflate the financial results in a year you are negotiating a teachers’ contract?

I believe Snow expressed less than a thank you when he said the auditor made negotiating the contract more difficult not less difficult with fund balances inflated by $1.5 million

Part 2 tomorrow.

= = = = =
At the top you can see teachers, including one shy one, picketing in front of Marlowe Elementary School.

This past winter, Glen Stewart, then-Chief Operating Officer and, before getting that over $100,000 a year job, a member of the Huntley School District 158 Board majority, wanted to extend the $2 million per year contract of the guys doing the janitorial work without going out for bids.

Superintendent John Burkey backed him up. The guy who gets paid close to $100,000 and is in charge of building and grounds was against bidding, too.

“The board pushed to rebid it, and that was a good move,” Burkey told Northwest Herald reporter Tom Musick

I pointed out that $2 million amounted to 5% of the school district’s operating budget. Even more, if utilities were excluded.

That was right after newly-appointed and now departed Chief Financial Officer Stacie Talbert has concluded–in writing yet!–

Taxpayers were fortunate to have watchdogs Larry Snow and Aileen Seedorf on deck.

I pointed out that I had prepared bid specs for the purchase of natural gas from the wellhead for state government in the mid-1980’s. We went out for bid and saved the state taxpayers $1 million a year.

So, the “we don’t have to go out for bid” approach by school board majority buddy Stewart made no sense to me.

It didn’t make sense to the school district’s Financial Advisory Committee either.

Kim Sjaka even took the recommendation to go out for bid off the board’s consent agenda. Skaja publicly told the board that it would cost more money (than current provider GCA’s offer to renew for more than $2 million a year), if the District went out to bid.

Good sense prevailed and the Huntley School District went out for bid on custodial services.

Well, the results are in and the district stands to save almost 3/4 of $1 million over the next three years because Snow and Seedorf didn’t let Stewart get away with just renewing the contract.

Stewart is no longer an employee of District 158.

This past winter, Glen Stewart, then-Chief Operating Officer and, before getting that over $100,000 a year job, a member of the Huntley School District 158 Board majority, wanted to extend the $2 million per year contract of the guys doing the janitorial work without going out for bids.

Superintendent John Burkey backed him up. The guy who gets paid close to $100,000 and is in charge of building and grounds was against bidding, too.

“The board pushed to rebid it, and that was a good move,” Burkey told Northwest Herald reporter Tom Musick

I pointed out that $2 million amounted to 5% of the school district’s operating budget. Even more, if utilities were excluded.

That was right after newly-appointed and now departed Chief Financial Officer Stacie Talbert has concluded–in writing yet!–

Taxpayers were fortunate to have watchdogs Larry Snow and Aileen Seedorf on deck.

I pointed out that I had prepared bid specs for the purchase of natural gas from the wellhead for state government in the mid-1980’s. We went out for bid and saved the state taxpayers $1 million a year.

So, the “we don’t have to go out for bid” approach by school board majority buddy Stewart made no sense to me.

It didn’t make sense to the school district’s Financial Advisory Committee either.

Kim Sjaka even took the recommendation to go out for bid off the board’s consent agenda. Skaja publicly told the board that it would cost more money (than current provider GCA’s offer to renew for more than $2 million a year), if the District went out to bid.

Good sense prevailed and the Huntley School District went out for bid on custodial services.

Well, the results are in and the district stands to save almost 3/4 of $1 million over the next three years because Snow and Seedorf didn’t let Stewart get away with just renewing the contract.

Stewart is no longer an employee of District 158.

I’m not sure why Public Television’s children’s show “Teletubbies” came to mind when I read the Daily Herald’s Jameel Naqvi story of the resignation of Huntley School District 158’s Chief Operating Officer Glen Stewart at last Thursday’s meeting.

Maybe it’s just a Huntley school district thing.

Fortunately, my son was not attracted to the poorly speaking characters.

“Nunu,” the Teletubby word for a vacuum clearer, is the only word that entered our vocabulary.

We don’t know why Stewart is leaving his over $100,000 job.

Maybe it was the severe electrical shock suffered by a school bus driver—serious enough to send her to the hospital.

Impossible to know.

You may remember that I commented on his absence a month ago.

There is no way to forget the picture I have run time after time of a grateful Stewart thanking a totally shocked then-Board President Mike Skala for helping put him in the $101,000 administrative post.

At the meeting, it was so clear that the decision had been made to hire Stewart before the meeting.

One thing is for sure, the board’s ruling majority will be losing a major friend inside the administration.

Another thing is for sure.

This school board cannot keep its second level administrators.

Two Chief Financial Officers–Stan Hall and Stacie Talbert–have left within a year. Now, the board will be searching for a Chief Operating Officer as well.

Maybe, if the fix isn’t in, more applicants with more directly related experience will be interested.

That is, if Dave Jenkins, currently technology director, who was appointed to the job on a six-month trial basis on the recommendation of Supt. Burkey, doesn’t capture the post. He will be paid at the rate of $84,000 per year, the Northwest Herald story says. And, he will be Burkey’s man, not the man of the ruling board majority.

One final note from the Northwest Herald’s Tom Musick’s article. It says Stewart will be getting money from District 158 through June. “$20,307 but no additional benefits,” Supt. Burkey said. If that is for a little over nine weeks’ work, the rate of pay would be a bit less than $2,200 per week or something like $115,000 per year.

Musick has this great line:

”Stewart’s exit marks the end of a two-year run that began with controversy and ended with questions.”

Parents will probably remember Stewart for the school bus fiasco less than two months after he was hired. He was featured in a flattering student newspaper article in mid-March.

= = = = =
Teletubbies waving bye-bye on top, followed by a missing Glen Stewart last month, the handshake of thanks from recently elected board member Stewart to then-Board President Mike Skala. Finally, Stewart can be seen on the left and a pensive Stan Hall on the right in the bottom picture.

I’m not sure why Public Television’s children’s show “Teletubbies” came to mind when I read the Daily Herald’s Jameel Naqvi story of the resignation of Huntley School District 158’s Chief Operating Officer Glen Stewart at last Thursday’s meeting.

Maybe it’s just a Huntley school district thing.

Fortunately, my son was not attracted to the poorly speaking characters.

“Nunu,” the Teletubby word for a vacuum clearer, is the only word that entered our vocabulary.

We don’t know why Stewart is leaving his over $100,000 job.

Maybe it was the severe electrical shock suffered by a school bus driver—serious enough to send her to the hospital.

Impossible to know.

You may remember that I commented on his absence a month ago.

There is no way to forget the picture I have run time after time of a grateful Stewart thanking a totally shocked then-Board President Mike Skala for helping put him in the $101,000 administrative post.

At the meeting, it was so clear that the decision had been made to hire Stewart before the meeting.

One thing is for sure, the board’s ruling majority will be losing a major friend inside the administration.

Another thing is for sure.

This school board cannot keep its second level administrators.

Two Chief Financial Officers–Stan Hall and Stacie Talbert–have left within a year. Now, the board will be searching for a Chief Operating Officer as well.

Maybe, if the fix isn’t in, more applicants with more directly related experience will be interested.

That is, if Dave Jenkins, currently technology director, who was appointed to the job on a six-month trial basis on the recommendation of Supt. Burkey, doesn’t capture the post. He will be paid at the rate of $84,000 per year, the Northwest Herald story says. And, he will be Burkey’s man, not the man of the ruling board majority.

One final note from the Northwest Herald’s Tom Musick’s article. It says Stewart will be getting money from District 158 through June. “$20,307 but no additional benefits,” Supt. Burkey said. If that is for a little over nine weeks’ work, the rate of pay would be a bit less than $2,200 per week or something like $115,000 per year.

Musick has this great line:

”Stewart’s exit marks the end of a two-year run that began with controversy and ended with questions.”

Parents will probably remember Stewart for the school bus fiasco less than two months after he was hired. He was featured in a flattering student newspaper article in mid-March.

= = = = =
Teletubbies waving bye-bye on top, followed by a missing Glen Stewart last month, the handshake of thanks from recently elected board member Stewart to then-Board President Mike Skala. Finally, Stewart can be seen on the left and a pensive Stan Hall on the right in the bottom picture.

This week I finally put together something I learned from former Harlem School District 122 board member Gloria Maloney in late 2006.

Maloney was on a fractured school board.

The reason for the fracture was her insistent questioning about things she thought were wrong. I could lay them out, but, let me just give you a taste. A check was sent to a supposed vendor with an address in an empty Rockford building. Mahoney went to court without an attorney to prevent the board from destroying financial records and won.

She also blew the whistle on the school “board’s decision in closed session to grant a convicted sex offender the right to attend a school function” at Machesney Park-based district. The person in question was the “the wife of a former board member,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Maloney also refused to go along with psychological testing of school board members and union negotiators before contract talks.

Needless to say, the 6-member ruling bloc and their supporters really wanted to get rid of her to end her continuing public questioning of matters which the majority did not want to see the light of day.

Remind you of any local school district?

Say, Huntley?

Mahoney told me that they that her board had hired a business manager who had quit shortly after being hired to go to work for Rock Valley College.

It turns out this person was Stacie Talbert, the Comptroller for Huntley School District 158, who just quit to go work for the Rockford Park District.

Her public reason for leaving had something to do with the contentiousness of the Huntley School Board.

But, having worked for the badly split Harlem School District, surely Talbert must have been aware of what might be going on in Huntley before she was hired.

The November 14, 2005, minutes of the Harlem school board tell of Talbert’s introduction at a school board meeting as the new business manager/ treasurer.

She resigns, effective December 9, 2005.

Reason? “Personal.”

Less than a month on the job…including Thanksgiving vacation.

Whatever she found was obviously not to her liking.

An internet search has Talbert ending up as Director of Financial Services for Rock Valley College. In that capacity, she moderated a panel at a Montreal Government Finance Officers Association conference on May 10, 2006. It appears she worked for Rock Valley College in 2002-2003, too.

So, the Huntley School District was not Talbert’s first experience with a school district whose board sharply disagreed.

I typed “Stacie Talbert” and “school” into Google’s search engine and found a Harlem School District reference listed as number 31.

I wonder if Talbert’s brief employment at the Harlem School District showed up on her resume. I wonder what a reference letter from Harlem would say.

But, most of all, I wonder what she found that caused her to leave so soon.

Given her devastating critique (long version; short version) of the Huntley School District’s internal controls, I’ll bet it was a doozy.

The majority bloc on the Harlem School Board defeated Gloria Maloney for re-election last spring after an incredible amount of abuse on Rockford Register-Star’s message board.

I am certain that the board meetings are quieter, but I doubt the public is well served by her absence.

This week I finally put together something I learned from former Harlem School District 122 board member Gloria Maloney in late 2006.

Maloney was on a fractured school board.

The reason for the fracture was her insistent questioning about things she thought were wrong. I could lay them out, but, let me just give you a taste. A check was sent to a supposed vendor with an address in an empty Rockford building. Mahoney went to court without an attorney to prevent the board from destroying financial records and won.

She also blew the whistle on the school “board’s decision in closed session to grant a convicted sex offender the right to attend a school function” at Machesney Park-based district. The person in question was the “the wife of a former board member,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Maloney also refused to go along with psychological testing of school board members and union negotiators before contract talks.

Needless to say, the 6-member ruling bloc and their supporters really wanted to get rid of her to end her continuing public questioning of matters which the majority did not want to see the light of day.

Remind you of any local school district?

Say, Huntley?

Mahoney told me that they that her board had hired a business manager who had quit shortly after being hired to go to work for Rock Valley College.

It turns out this person was Stacie Talbert, the Comptroller for Huntley School District 158, who just quit to go work for the Rockford Park District.

Her public reason for leaving had something to do with the contentiousness of the Huntley School Board.

But, having worked for the badly split Harlem School District, surely Talbert must have been aware of what might be going on in Huntley before she was hired.

The November 14, 2005, minutes of the Harlem school board tell of Talbert’s introduction at a school board meeting as the new business manager/ treasurer.

She resigns, effective December 9, 2005.

Reason? “Personal.”

Less than a month on the job…including Thanksgiving vacation.

Whatever she found was obviously not to her liking.

An internet search has Talbert ending up as Director of Financial Services for Rock Valley College. In that capacity, she moderated a panel at a Montreal Government Finance Officers Association conference on May 10, 2006. It appears she worked for Rock Valley College in 2002-2003, too.

So, the Huntley School District was not Talbert’s first experience with a school district whose board sharply disagreed.

I typed “Stacie Talbert” and “school” into Google’s search engine and found a Harlem School District reference listed as number 31.

I wonder if Talbert’s brief employment at the Harlem School District showed up on her resume. I wonder what a reference letter from Harlem would say.

But, most of all, I wonder what she found that caused her to leave so soon.

Given her devastating critique (long version; short version) of the Huntley School District’s internal controls, I’ll bet it was a doozy.

The majority bloc on the Harlem School Board defeated Gloria Maloney for re-election last spring after an incredible amount of abuse on Rockford Register-Star’s message board.

I am certain that the board meetings are quieter, but I doubt the public is well served by her absence.

One of the immediate positive results of Stacie Talbert’s report on internal controls to Huntley School District 158’s board last Thursday night was Superintendent John Burkey’s commitment to require their use from then on.

Here’s what Larry Snow told me:

“At the meeting on Thursday night, I asked Superintendent Burkey if on Friday he would ask his staff and insist that they use purchase orders. He said, ‘Yes.’”

Here’s the summary of the purchasing policy of the Huntley School District supplied by Talbert:

Here is a more detailed extraction from her report about District 158’s internal control problems, purchasing being only one of them:

Purchasing Cycle:

“Overall controls and business processes surrounding the purchasing process are inconsistent, weak, and lend it self to major deficiencies…below are some of the more significant deficiencies…:

There is no professional purchasing agent… All bids, requests for proposals and request for qualifications are handled by the individual departments and the process is not standardized.

“There is no requirement for departments to utilize purchase orders…As a result there are very large dollar amounts request to be paid on a check request… [when] the goods and services have already been received… Develop a threshold for requiring all purchases over an established dollar amount be placed on a purchase order… [and be approved by the] B[oard] o[f] E[ducation]…

“…no accounts payable processing should be tasks within the purchasing area.

“There is no approved purchaser list with established purchasing limits…”

Tomorrow – A specific.

One of the immediate positive results of Stacie Talbert’s report on internal controls to Huntley School District 158’s board last Thursday night was Superintendent John Burkey’s commitment to require their use from then on.

Here’s what Larry Snow told me:

“At the meeting on Thursday night, I asked Superintendent Burkey if on Friday he would ask his staff and insist that they use purchase orders. He said, ‘Yes.’”

Here’s the summary of the purchasing policy of the Huntley School District supplied by Talbert:

Here is a more detailed extraction from her report about District 158’s internal control problems, purchasing being only one of them:

Purchasing Cycle:

“Overall controls and business processes surrounding the purchasing process are inconsistent, weak, and lend it self to major deficiencies…below are some of the more significant deficiencies…:

There is no professional purchasing agent… All bids, requests for proposals and request for qualifications are handled by the individual departments and the process is not standardized.

“There is no requirement for departments to utilize purchase orders…As a result there are very large dollar amounts request to be paid on a check request… [when] the goods and services have already been received… Develop a threshold for requiring all purchases over an established dollar amount be placed on a purchase order… [and be approved by the] B[oard] o[f] E[ducation]…

“…no accounts payable processing should be tasks within the purchasing area.

“There is no approved purchaser list with established purchasing limits…”

Tomorrow – A specific.