The Tampa Bay Tribune reported that school officials in Hillsborough County were surprised to discover a big hole in the budget after Superintendent MaryEllen Elia was fired and became New York State Commissioner of Education.
“TAMPA — In the last four years of superintendent MaryEllen Elia’s administration, the Hillsborough County School District went on a spending jag, tearing through more than half of its $361 million reserve fund, officials revealed this week.
“Left unchecked, the pattern would have resulted in another operating deficit this year — a $75 million hit that would bring the fund down near its legal minimum threshhold.
“The situation has surprised Elia’s successor, unsettled School Board members and put bonding agencies on alert, which could lead to the district facing higher interest rates when it has to borrow money.
“Jeff Eakins, who took over as superintendent after serving as Elia’s deputy, says he was caught off guard when he realized the district used $68.5 million in non-recurring funds to meet this year’s payroll.
“We’re not in any kind of financial crisis,” Eakins told the Tampa Bay Times editorial board Tuesday. But, he said, “we need to put some measures in place right now.”
A new pay structure started with funding from the Gates Foundation may cost as much as $50 million.
“It is clear, Eakins said, that the district, which serves more than 200,000 children, is spending money to extend programs that were launched with temporary funding from foundations.
“The Gates grant is one example, as it is in its final year of funding. Expenses anticipated for 2015-16 include $11.3 million for teacher peer evaluators and $6.1 million to pay mentors. Eakins said he will take a close look at these expenditures to see if they are worth sustaining, or if they should be reduced.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Now we discover what happens when the Gates grant (another word for bribe) money walks away with the oligarchs and the puppet administrator isn’t there to continue the cover up.
With all of his wealth, Gates can not match and sustain funding for his pet projects compared to a public source called taxes. No wonder Wall Street and/or Hedge Funds want to get their hands on the public’s money.
Gates has done this before.
“About a decade ago, he (Psychopath—my emphasis—Bill Gates) decided that the biggest problem in U.S. education was the size of high schools, and he proceeded to spend $2 billion to persuade school districts to downsize their high schools. He told the nation’s governors that the American comprehensive high school was ‘obsolete.’ Districts lined up to get grants from his foundation to break up their high schools, and more than 2,000 of them converted to small schools, with mixed results. Some fell into squabbling turf wars, some succeeded, but Gates’ own researchers concluded that the students in large schools got better test scores than those in his prized small schools. So in late 2008, he simply walked away from what was once his burning cause.
The main effect of Gates’ policy has been to demoralize millions of teachers, who don’t understand how they went from being respected members of the community to Public Enemy No. 1.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/23/bill-gates-selling-bad-advice-to-the-public-schools.html
When we the nation learn that wherever Gates’ money goes, destruction and ruin follows in his shadow and shadows never stay long?
Bill Gates is like the preschooler who takes a Bulgari watch apart that he does not own because he thinks he can make it work better, and then he can’t figure out how to put it back together again once he’s destroyed it, so he just gives up and moves on to tear something else apart like a Ferrari that also belongs to someone else. Imagine what he would do if the United States handed the public’s military to him: the Army, the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force.
LikeLike
I wholeheartedly agree with your opinion of Gates. It is my opinion that he has single-handedly destroyed so many institutions and initiatives because he is apparently a narcissist.
Even malaria researchers decry his involvement.
Most of his ideas are flops. Period. He ain’t as special as he thinks he is.
LikeLike
Hey, there was Microsoft Bob!
LikeLike
Funny you should mention that Lloyd…When I was a young soldier in special forces he tried to do just that. He had a Microcrap system to give us a full field view of areas as we patrolled. He also showed the range finding capability was 1 meter per 1000 more accurate than our mildot scopes….I pointed out to him that I and my team did not need to carry 20 extra pounds of battery operated crap that was untested and would fail at the wrong time. Furthermore, Each team member needed to be focused on his own sector, not the whole perimeter. He tried to go over my head, we invited him to come jump out of our plane with his device and see if it would work better than our parachutes.
LikeLike
One of the trademarks of the heavyweights in the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement is their obsession with short-term funding of long-term mandates that can’t be sustained without doing a great deal of harm to the schools (staff, students, parents, communities) they claim to want to help.
Both ironic and hypocritical given the constant harping by the same “hard-nosed business-minded” folks that prattle on about the wonders of data points and VAM and such.
In practice, the “bidness” they seem to be most concerned about is that involved in accounting, i.e., counting up $tudent $ucce$$.
For so many, it’s put a little money up front now in order to get a lot more money later on.
Go figure… [a numbers/stats joke]
😎
LikeLike
Two follow-up articles, one from the Tampa Bay Times on Friday, http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/in-hillsborough-nobody-noticed-as-school-reserves-dipped-by-tens-of/2240512; and this scathing statement from Elia in which she vigorously defends herself and points fingers o plenty at others — all this while in her job here in NYS, http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-commentary/maryellen-elia-board-eakins-fully-aware-of-budget-moves-20150807/. (Apparently the latter link is not working for me but I understand that the comments posted were described as “interesting.”)
LikeLike
Off-topic, but Peter Greene would never promote himself here, so I’ll do it for him. He’s published a book: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/08/so-i-have-book.html?showComment=1439131185835#c1771442446920214214
LikeLike
Elia put out a statement claiming the Board voted on all spending and that Eakins was fully aware of it. Both sides can’t both be on the side of truth.
LikeLike
My oh my! Elia played fast and loose with district funds in Florida. Coincidentally, Anderson was guilty of the same practices in New Jersey.
LikeLike
When Tim McGonagal, former superintendent of neighboring Manatee County, ended up over budget and the reserve inmhos county was empty and overspent he was forced to resign.
The Class Size comstitutional amendment (passed twice by the voters, much to Jeb! Bush’s ire) is always blamed for budget shortfalls and it is partly the cause of budget shortfalls.
The tea party legislature and governor refuse to fund the new teacher salaries and most of their own reform/testing initiatives leaving districts to scramble for increased millage rates that are resisted and blocked by voters in many counties.
Bush was famous for his three card monte games with lottery funds. He would deduct the exact same smount from general funds which pay for education that the lottery added to school funding. Then he would claim he increased education spending when in reality it was the same or less.
Sorry you have to deal with her now, NY! She was a total Gates capture here.
LikeLike
Not sure how things happen in Florida, but here (SC) our local district never dips into the reserve without the school board agreeing to…Is it really possible that she did so unilaterally? Is that what is being asserted?
LikeLike
I’m sure the board voted for it. But remember that the board of today is different from the board she served under. A few of her supporters were defeated in their re-election bid specifically because they were portrayed as her cheerleaders and rubber stamps for her agenda.
Will the voters hold the others accountable when they are up for re-election? Probably. It depends on how far away their campaigns are and what scandals erupt between now and then.
LikeLike
Reform spending on tech, tests and bonuses sent our district into deficit. The Broadie Super then supported a budget that would cut 55 people from our suburban schools. (Didn’t happen due to community protest and Super left.)
But ses like that’s the plan, overspend then cut people. Next step? TFA perhaps, or uncertified teachers like Kansas? Or sticknevery kid in front of a computer? Or the Bridge model from Kenya?
LikeLike