School board spent $65,000 on trips to Coronado

A rural Arizona school district wasted more than $65,000 in taxpayer money over five years on an annual governing board trip to Coronado Island near San Diego, the state’s auditor general wrote in a May report.

Gadsden Elementary School District, in San Luis in the southwest corner of the state, was flagged in a May audit for wasteful spending, and may have broken the open meeting law. The district serves about 5,000 students.

The district’s five-person board has taken an annual trip to Coronado Island for a decade, according to the audit.

From 2015 to 2019, the board’s visits to Coronado cost taxpayers more than $65,000 total. The money could have instead been spent on teaching materials, the auditor noted.

The 2018 trip cost $16,000, including more than $9,000 in lodging and nearly $4,000 in meals. The trip was so expensive that it exceeded the maximum travel spending allowed by the state.

Board members and nine staff members stayed in Coronado for two nights at a rate of $259. The audit does not specify which hotel the board stayed at, but meeting documents show the board meeting was held at Coronado’s Marriott Resort. The state’s maximum rate for hotel stays in Coronado was $167 a night, notes the audit.

The trip also included breakfast and lunch buffets and snack service, costing nearly $4,000, according to the audit.

The audit also raises questions about whether Gadsden’s board violated open meeting law. State law requires board meetings to be open to the public, with few exceptions. By having the meeting more than three hours away, the auditor wrote, the district limited meeting accessibility to the public.

When the state auditor asked district officials why they chose Coronado, “they responded that the district held this meeting in California to limit interruptions from the public.”

The Auditor General has forwarded the report to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which could investigation allegations of open meeting law violations, among other things.

District officials did not immediately respond to The Arizona Republic’s request for comment.

In Gadsden’s response to the audit, officials agreed with the report’s recommendation to halt Coronado trips.