Commentary

Your Bond Money at Work

I’m continually amazed how school districts blow millions of dollars in bond money–without building any actual buildings. Yet, voters continue to say yes to more school facilities bonds. This week San Francisco Unified is the case in point. San Francisco’s city controller has found major accounting mistakes in the school district’s spending of construction bond money and is urging the district to stop additional projects until it fixes the problems. In a report to be released next week, Controller Ed Harrington’s office found a lack of communication between district departments, computational errors, contradictions in what phase of construction projects were in, no record of $30 million in bonds that had been sold, no record of $13 million that had been spent and $19 million noted simply as “miscellaneous spending.” Good to see that this is what happens after the school district “reforms” there school construction system. Harrington’s findings come after what Ackerman has called a major cleanup of the district’s spending on facilities. Under her predecessor, Bill Rojas, the district misspent at least $100 million from four voter-approved bonds, and promised projects never materialized.