Schools combat employee theft; remedy sought

More than $100,000 belonging to sports teams, ROTC programs and other student activities disappeared from three Palm Beach County schools in recent years.

The cases led to the arrests in the past 14 months of former school treasurers at Palm Beach Gardens High, Bak Middle School of the Arts in West Palm Beach and Boca Raton High.

On Thursday, the district’s Audit Committee will discuss ways to keep it from happening again. Among the options: in-

stalling security cameras, no longer accepting cash at schools, switching from a paper to an electronic method of logging money and hiring three new employees to better monitor schools on financial matters.

“We’re constantly trying to improve, but you have to balance the controls with what’s practical,” said Mike Burke, the district’s chief financial officer. “You don’t want to spend a million dollars to protect $10,000.”

He said the district has controls in place that helped catch the recent incidents.

“If you’re in a cash business, you’re going to have some level of theft,” he said.

The string of incidents began in the 2015-16 school year at Palm Beach Gardens High, when the district’s inspector general determined that credit cards belonging to the Junior ROTC program, as well as other accounts, were used to make more than $13,000 in improper purchases.

A review determined that Terri Miller, the former treasurer at the school, had bought eggs, bread, sports drinks and other personal items at Sam’s Club and Costco over five years. She was arrested in May 2016 but her fraud charges will be dropped if she meets the terms of a pre-trial diversion program.

The investigation also found that former Assistant Principal Richard Williams, 54, who is Miller’s brother, made $1,142 in unauthorized purchases, including vitamins and supplements, lobster tails, shrimp, scallops, salmon spread, crab cakes and other gourmet food items. Williams resigned in September but wasn’t criminally charged.

Last year, district police asked the State Attorney’s Office to charge Cathleen Spring, the former treasurer of Bak, with fraud after $67,000 went missing. But the office said there were no security cameras or other proof that she took the missing money. Prosecutors decided in June to charge her with forgery, after school principal Sally Rozanski said Spring signed her name on checks without permission.

The school district began investigating Bak in February 2015 after the athletic director complained that money from concession sales and other fundraisers were not showing up in account records. The investigation found money was improperly being transferred from some school club accounts to others to pay for bills.

Police said $10,000 in cash had been turned in and recorded on a log, but the record of the deposit was covered with white correction fluid. Other logs were missing. One was found in a shredder, the police report states.

In the most recent case, the Lisa Rivera, the former treasurer of Boca Raton High, was arrested on charges that she stole more than $23,000 between 2013 and 2015. A police report accuses her of stealing money from a safe and replacing it with checks turned in by groups such as the volleyball and wrestling teams. Her receipt of the checks was not documented on financial logs, the investigation determined.

Shredded collected-money reports were found in the trash in Rivera’s office, the report said.

The criminal cases against Rivera and Spring are pending.