Don’t let school theft put a chill on volunteering
Rick Christie
As a father of three kids who went through Palm Beach County schools — elementary to high school — I did a good bit of volunteering. Along with many other parents, I participated in Parent-Teacher Organizations, School Advisory Councils and myriad fundraisers over the years.
It was gratifying work. That’s why I still do it despite the girls having long graduated. It’s why I’ve used this column to beat the drum for volunteering in local schools.
But like many of those volunteers — former and current — I was troubled by Andrew Marra’s May 3 story on the missing $66,000 from Bak Middle School of the Arts.
Yes, that Bak Middle of the Arts. The perennially A-rated school that first lady Melania Trump chose to highlight with a visit with her Chinese counterpart, Peng Liyuan, in April. The Bak which, full disclosure, two of my daughters attended.
While some may view this sordid incident as taking the prestigious arts school down a peg, Marra’s story reminded me of questions that always nagged at me as a volunteer who helped raise thousands of dollars for my daughters’ schools: Do we know that one of these “uber volunteers” isn’t pocketing some of this cash? Is it OK for someone to take a cash box with thousands of dollars in it home for the weekend after a Friday night event?
In Bak’s case, a Palm Beach County schools police investigation found that school treasurer Cathleen Spring allegedly stole the $66,000 over a threeyear period from the school’s coffers. She apparently did this without anyone noticing — until too late.
If that’s not enough to have school volunteers looking a bit askance, there’s this: Spring, who resigned during the investigation, is not being charged in the theft.
Yep. The office of Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg decided that, despite a pile of evidence found by the school police probe, it was just “circumstantial.”
Well, that’s all a bit disappointing
Bak Principal Sally Rozanski told the Post that the state attorney’s office’s conclusion is full of “inaccuracies” and defended the school’s procedures for handling cash deposits. “There are procedures in place,” she said. “She (Spring) didn’t follow the procedures.”
Rozanski, who added that the school has taken steps to prevent additional thefts, called the scale of Spring’s thefts “devastating” and the prosecutors’ decision disappointing.
She’s not alone . The Post received numerous letters from readers scratching their heads over the state attorney’s decision.
Joan Grossman, of West Palm Beach: Regarding your article ... about the theft from Bak Middle School by Cathleen Spring: I was dumbfounded that there will be no charges. If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck — or if it looks like a thief, if it acts like a thief, if it sounds like a thief, then it’s a thief.
And this from Joseph Pruszynski, of Palm Beach Gardens: Hundreds of felons have been jailed on the strength of the preponderance of circumstantial evidence. I am appalled that the alleged grand theft over several years by the treasurer of Bak Middle School will not be prosecuted ... A jury should have heard this case and made its determination on its merits. This sad example will certainly give encouragement to clever thieves to search out “lax” controls wherever public funds are handled.
A troubling amount of circumstances
The 52-year-old Spring, who was making $25,600 a year when the financial issues were revealed, denied to police taking any of the missing $66,000. She couldn’t explain how the money disappeared, however.
That’s troubling. Because the “circumstantial” evidence compiled by the police, and detailed in Marra’s front-page story, is about as damning as it gets.
According to the story, Spring — who declined to be interviewed by the Post — was the only school employee responsible for removing cash from the safe and depositing it in the school’s bank accounts. In more than 100 cases, police say money vanished from deposits between the time that Spring removed them and when they were taken to the bank.
School district police Detective Kevin McCoy wrote in an arrest report: “Spring was the last individual to be in possession of these deposits later discovered missing. Defendant Spring never reported individual deposits missing, or documented on the drop safe log these deposits were missing.”
Also, police said they found repeated evidence of efforts to cover up the vanished cash.
In one instance, police said Spring removed a deposit from the safe containing cash and checks but deposited only the checks. As the cash vanished, a portion of the report indicating that there had been cash in the deposit was blotted out with white correction fluid, police discovered.
In another, investigators said they opened a second safe in Spring’s office — one where she stored deposit bags awaiting pickup by a bank courier — and found that deposits that Spring had recently removed from the school’s main safe were not there and could not be accounted for.
Among other things, Spring also transferred money between school accounts without authorization, forged the principal’s signature on a $7,433 check and used a school-issued credit card to buy two pairs of Ugg boots.
To all of this, and more, prosecutors said ... Meh.
“In essence, the state would have to prove a negative, that no one else but Cathleen Spring could have stolen the money and that the 108 deposit envelopes actually contained the amounts recorded on them with Spring being the only one to count all the funds,” Assistant State Attorney Timothy Beckwith wrote in September.
“With the passage of time, and the lack of any direct evidence to support this conclusion,” he wrote, “the state cannot meet its burden.”
Schools can’t afford a freeze among volunteers
So prosecutors couldn’t be bothered to conduct their own investigation — if for no other reason, but to clear Spring’s name? And don’t they have investigative powers of their own?
Again, Spring denies taking any money. And as scandals go, I suppose many folks won’t see this as something that merits serious attention. But it should. Schools, especially public schools, depend heavily on volunteers. They depend heavily on their fundraising and donations. Just ask a school principal.
Thus, news that a school treasurer may have stolen $66,000 raised with the sweat of hundreds of parents, with no repercussions whatsoever can have an understandably chilling effect on those volunteer efforts. I hope not. I hope parents look at this and take the opportunity to question their school officials about what checks and balances they have in place to make sure something like this doesn’t happen at their school.
And I hope that school administrators take this opportunity to reassure all of those thousands of parents who volunteer in schools that the school district will not abide such fiscal sloppiness. That the district will not only root out, but seek to punish anyone who would prey on, and take advantage of our kids in such a way.
Because the amount of money raised by school district volunteers, annually, is in the millions of dollars.
Think about what would happen if any of that went away. Or, maybe don’t.