WALSH PLAYS COY IN BPS IRS BOONDOGGLE
Parents, officials lash out at Chang, some call for new evaluation
Parents last night demanded greater accountability from Superintendent Tommy Chang after he fumbled the disclosure of an embarrassing IRS audit, suggesting the School Committee should revisit his job performance review.
“This is a serious misstep,” said Peggy Wisenberg, a member of Quality Education for Every Student advocacy group. “There should be some accountability, maybe a redo of his performance evaluation . ... It is not clear who is running the school department.”
An IRS audit of 16 student activity accounts — meant to fund clubs and other activities — showed $150,000 went to vendors who were not taxed and educators working under the table in 2014. Details for many of the expenses were spotty, with some administrators confessing they threw out receipts.
“I think someone who is superintendent should absolutely have more grasp of that,” said Karen Kast McBride, a parent at Boston Arts Academy. “Chang needs to take responsibility. He needs to be forthcoming.”
The city first received notice that it owed some of the back payments in March, according to audit documents, but while Mayor Martin J. Walsh said he had heard of the audit’s existence a few months ago, he wasn’t aware of the final amount owed until last week.
Chang had sent a memo out to school leaders detailing problems from the BPS audit in June and received a full list of back payments owed in August, according to IRS documents. Chang was not superintendent at the time of the financial missteps, but is being criticized for failing to be forthcoming about the audit.
Walsh said he had talked with Chang about not being informed.
“We probably should’ve been notified earlier, absolutely; it didn’t happen. We’ve had a conversation, myself and the superintendent, and it won’t happen again,” Walsh said. “The superintendent had the findings; the school department had the findings. I didn’t have them, and that’s where there was a miscommunication, a big miscommunication; it’s something I’m not happy about.”
McBride added Chang needs to “dig into what happened and where the ball was dropped.”
In a statement, Chang said “We appreciate the IRS auditors for bringing this issue to our attention. As soon as we learned of potential irregularities from the initial findings of the IRS audit, we took swift and decisive action to correct issues with decades-old practices regarding school student activity accounts. The trust of our families, our staff and the public at large is of utmost importance to me and the rest of the Boston Public Schools.”
Chang’s job performance — which Wisenberg now suggests should be revisited — was rated as “mostly proficient” for his second year on the job, the School Committee announced early last month. Chang earned $271,700 last year, records obtained by the Herald show.
The scrub of the school books was part of a larger city audit that ultimately required nearly $1 million to be paid in back taxes — more than $700,000 of that for unpaid Medicare withholding that the city claims came from unintentional, inaccurate classifications of some employees. The money was paid out of the city’s fund used to pay legal settlements and court orders.
Greg Sullivan of the Pioneer Institute, a former state inspector general, said the massive payment in back taxes calls for an outside agency to step in and examine school and city auditing practices.
“I think the officials involved, including the superintendent, had the responsibility to come forward and admit and set forth the facts that a very big series of mistakes was made,” Sullivan said.