Trumbull ed board vows to abide by audit findings
TRUMBULL — While school administrators are vowing to implement changes recommended in a scathing audit, others say the financial troubles are a result of years of underfunding the district.
Superintendent Martin Semmel told the Board of Education on Tuesday that he and school business administrator Paul Hendrickson were going to “go through every one of these recommendations, starting with the priorities, and
work our way down.”
“That will be our work, and we’ll have a report that shows our progress along the way,” he said.
The audit, which was ordered in early 2020 after interim Superintendent Ralph Iassogna reported finding a “dire” budget shortfall, was delivered Jan. 4. At a joint meeting Jan. 5, members of the town’s Board of Finance and the town council’s Education Committee called the report “shocking, disturbing and disappointing,” among other comments.
Semmel and Hendrickson both have been on the job since September and were not associated with the district during the three-year period covered by the audit.
“There has been almost an entire change in senior management in the past four months,” he said during his 17-minute response.
On Dec. 8, Hendrickson met with Joseph Centofanti, a partner in the accounting firm PKF O’Connor Davies who conducted the audit. Centofanti acknowledged that the findings related to actions conducted by a prior administration and confirmed that he had found “no evidence of malfeasance or misappropriation,” Hendrickson said.
Of the 68 specific recommendations in the report, Hendrickson told the board the administration already was following some, and had agreed to prioritize implementing others.
Hendrickson said he and Semmel “take these recommendations very seriously.”
“We were aware of some before the report was issued, and we began working on them,” he said.
For example, Hendrickson said the school system had been taking out notes from TD Bank. While this had been noted on prior budgets, it was not as clear as it could have been, he said.
“Statements were included, but they should be more transparent,” he said. “The budget has been recast to break out the loans per recommendation of the auditor.”
Hendrickson also addressed a part of the report that indicated the schools had made some purchases without going through the proper bid process. Hendrickson requested information about the vendor, purchase price and possible extenuating circumstances around those purchases, but that information was not included in the final report. He also noted that the report listed 12 or 13 purchases that had not been bid, or about one for every quarter of the period covered.
Still, he committed to improving the process.
“We will follow the town’s purchasing policy, and we also will work with the purchasing manager to develop an easy-to-understand (policy) chart for all personnel,” he said.
In other areas, such as financial reporting, Hendrickson pointed out that the current administration has already enacted internal procedures that the audit recommended, even when those procedures were not mandated by school board policy.
Finally, Hendrickson said the 39 school paraprofessionals that the report indicated had not been included in the school budget were potential substitutes that were on-call. He also took exception to the audit listing the paraprofessionals under the heading Analysis of Hidings and Terminations.
“I don’t think there were any hidings,” he said.
School officials plan to meet with town council and board of finance representatives Jan. 28.
Although Board of Education Chairwoman Lucinda Timpanelli has said the school board would work with the town to improve the system’s financial controls, the report also showed the dangers of under-funding the schools, according to PTSA President-elect Frank Squiccimarro.
“I am not an accountant, but I talked to some who looked at the audit for me,” he said. “What this really shows is that we don’t have enough money, and that’s why creative accounting was done to try to fill the gaps.”
Some of the more controversial findings in the report, like the 39 unbudgeted paraprofessionals, had been reported by Iassogna a year ago, he said.
“It wasn’t shocking, it was common knowledge,” Squiccimarro said. “Being shocked by it now is amazing, because that means you may not have been paying attention when you cut the budget, and voted to cut money from it after knowing it wasn’t fully funded.”
Marylena Kourounis, the outgoing PTSA Council president, agreed, calling on the school board to explain the conditions that led to these practices and to develop a plan to restore credibility to the board and its budgeting.
“Failure to act may empower some to argue that education in Trumbull is a dysfunctional line item,” she said. “For far too long, our administrators, teachers and staff have been praised for their ability to do more with less. Perhaps, what the audit report demonstrates is what happens when an educational system is simply not adequately funded.”