School board responds to Commissioners rejection

HALIFAX – The Halifax County Board of Education has responded to the Halifax County Commissioners rejection of the $2.1 million bail out funding request from Halifax County Schools on March 10. 

“We are disappointed,” said Superintendent Geraldine Middleton after the meeting, “but will continue negotiating with the state on the amount of this debt and we will continue to look at ways to pay back what we owe.”

Middleton told the commissioners the district is in negotiations with the state about the amount it says the district owes and she asked the board to appoint a commissioner to represent the county in those sessions.

The board rejected that recommendation, but did appoint County Manager Tony Brown to represent the county in the ongoing talks between the school district and the state.

“I don’t think we need to get involved,” said Commissioner Rives Manning. “That’s between the Board of Education and the state.”

Manning then said that although it appears the school district did mishandle funding from 2005 through 2007, he also questioned the state’s oversight responsibilities during those two school years.

Commissioner Carolyn Johnson, former interim superintendent for HCS, said she has thoroughly scrutinized the recent 2005-’06 audit and found several discrepancies.

For example, she pointed out that the software accounting program the district used indicated that journal entries (financial transactions) had been made properly, but the audit report said they had not been made at all.

She also pointed out that the amount of overspending in certain budgets did not match, indicating the audit was flawed and that the district does not owe the amount of money the auditor and the state says it owes.

Johnson also pointed out that in some cases she is aware of; the state has forgiven debt school districts have owed, further stating that overspending state funds is common throughout the state because allocations are not known until after the fiscal year is well under way.

Finally, Johnson said that although the auditing firm said the district’s books were “in a mess”, when a federal audit was conducted in December 2007, “They found the best kept records they have ever seen.”

Middleton said the federal audit looked at staff and administration records.

She also emphasized that the district is in negotiation with the Department of Public Instruction to reduce or eliminate the funding they said HCS owes.

But she added, “Right now they say we have a $2.1 million deficit we have to address.”

Board Chairman Gene Minton asked why it took the state more than a year to let anyone know that the district had overspent for the 2005-’06 school year.

Middleton said they were awaiting the 2005-’06 audit, which when completed in January 2008 was itself more than a year overdue.

“If I were you,” Minton said, “I’d want to know why, if we were getting monthly notifications [of overspending] from DPI, nothing ever happened.”

Minton said later, “Somebody, somewhere, totally disregarded the monthly reports and DPI totally ignored the lack of response.”

The board voted 4-0 to not give the school district the requested funds. Johnson abstained from voting and Commissioner James Pierce had stepped out of the meeting before the vote took place.