Ex-district leader back to stun
Crosby ISD’s former superintendent apologizes, says he failed to do his job
In a surprise appearance at Crosby ISD’s school board meeting Tuesday evening, former Superintendent Keith Moore told trustees and the community he never knowingly defrauded the district while it ticked toward financial ruin during his tenure.
He said the district’s current financial crisis primarily stemmed from one decision: to continue building a state-of-the-art baseball and softball facility even though it was apparent
that there was not enough money left over from a 2013 bond to finish the job.
Moore spent more than 30 minutes reading a prepared statement and calmly answering questions fired at him from frustrated community members while Crosby ISD trustees and current Superintendent Scott Davis held a closed executive session.
Moore said former Chief Financial Officer Carla Merka led him to believe that financial maneuvering would allow the district to finish all of its 2013 bond projects as promised, but he realized around June 2017 that the district could be headed toward dire financial straits.
He apologized to the more than 100 Crosby ISD employees who lost their jobs because of the district’s official financial emergency, which the board declared in October, and said he failed as a superintendent.
“I don’t blame you for being angry with me or upset with me; I’ll take it,” Moore told dozens of community members. “I can honestly go to my grave knowing I did not lie, I did not try to hide things or do things wrong. I just did a very bad job.”
Moore’s revelations came moments before third-party accountants with Weaver & Tidwell LLP presented findings from the district’s 20172018 annual audit, which found evidence of “fraudulent financial reporting.” Auditors wrote that former administrators did not log nearly $8 million in construction cost overruns when they occurred in 2017, instead waiting to pass a bond that same year and begin paying those debts before logging them in the district’s financial statements the following year.
The audit alleged that no one monitored construction costs relating to the $86.5 million bond approved by voters in 2013, and eventually the overruns swelled to $16.1 million more than was set aside. There was not enough money in the district’s general fund to cover those costs.
Former administrators’ solution for covering those costs, auditors wrote and Moore confirmed, was to ask the board to set aside funds to repay construction firms from a proposed 2017 bond. On July 24, 2017, the Crosby ISD’s school board voted 4-2, with one trustee absent, to reimburse the district for 2013 bond cost overruns with a future bond.
It still wasn’t enough. From April until June 2018, auditors said, the district transferred a total of $5.65 million of additional 2017 bond proceeds from its capital projects fund to the general fund to cover operational and payroll expenditures.
While Moore did not mention Merka by name, he alleged his “former CFO” told him in early 2017 that the district could find more money to cover the growing construction costs by moving the end date of the district’s fiscal year back by several weeks. Before Merka told him paying for all the projects could be possible, Moore said he planned to ask the board to either scale back all three 2013 bond projects to make sure they could all be completed, or finish Crosby High School and the Cougar Football Stadium as promised and scrap ambitious plans for the baseball and softball facility.
He said the board approved moving the end of the district’s fiscal year after listening to a report presented by Merka that explained why the maneuver was made, and that he told trustees the district appeared to be heading into a financial tailspin as early as July 2017 — before they voted to use 2017 bond proceeds to cover the construction overruns.
Ultimately, the district failed to set aside millions to pay teachers’ salaries for one month in 2018 because the fiscal year was pushed back by one month. The current administration had to pull those funds from Crosby ISD’s construction fund to give teachers their paychecks.
Moore said he was always upfront with trustees and never deceived them about the district’s issues or issues with the 2013 bond. Community members objected, including Kris McGinty, who said the picture Moore painted Tuesday did not match what was sold to them when the district sought support for the 2017 bond.
Angela and Orrin Hayes were both Crosby ISD graduates and have children in the district. They have been attending every meeting since the district has declared its financial crisis.
One of their concerns was the construction of Cougar Stadium.
“The amount of stuff that they put over there was like, do we really need a multimillion-dollar football stadium, do we need a multimillion-dollar baseball field?” Orrin said.
Angela added that those things are not necessary if the district is unable to properly pay their teachers.
Both said they were in shock when they saw Moore walk into the room and speak to not only the board but answer the questions Crosby residents have been longing to ask him since he resigned last year.
“I was very shocked. I was very shocked he came back to Crosby. I thought he would never show his face in Crosby again,” Angela said.
Angela and Orrin said Moore answered some of their questions, but others were not satisfied.
Crosby resident Kimberly Miller said she did not believe Moore’s explanations.
“I think he’s lying, I think he hid money,” Miller said. “He knew about it all, and to say he doesn’t is BS.”
Both Miller and the couple added that trustees Carla Windfont, Tanya Eagleton, Randy Condra and David Porter should resign from the board and criminal charges should be pressed against those responsible.