I’m all for greater accountability in the Seattle Public Schools, but honestly Lynne, could you have found a stupider and less convincing bit of data to support your thesis?
Let’s move from fattened paychecks to misplaced and stolen district property. (Feel free to pause here to get a drink, take some deep breaths — I had to.)
Thanks to generous voters of technology levies and other funding, Seattle’s schools boast $56 million in multimedia equipment, including laptops, televisions, digital cameras and camcorders. But auditors found $7,412 in inventory missing.
The district’s response — shoddy record keeping means some lost items will turn up eventually, others will be replaced — is too blasé for the gravity of this.
That’s right… auditors could only account for 99.99% of the district’s technology inventory! Oh. My. God.
Really Lynne? Did you take that drink after you ran across those numbers, or before?
I wish I knew where 99.99% of my stuff was, and I’m guessing most private corporations would simply drool over the same. In fact, $7,412 worth of missing inventory out of $56 million is so bizarrely low, that I just have to assume that either Varner or the auditor got the numbers wrong, for there’s absolutely no way an operation that big and that distributed can possibly keep track of that much inventory that reliably.
Again, I’m not arguing against greater accountability — we should always strive for our taxpayer funded institutions to be as accountable as humanly possibly — but there are real problems in Seattle Schools, and if Varner’s numbers are right, this sure ain’t one of ’em.
Varner: What a puddybud!
Seriously, that level of accountability COSTS BIG BUCKS.
The real question to ask is how much was spent to acheive 99.9%. I bet it’s order(s) of magnitude more than $7k.
My, Varner definitely has her head up her Puddybud!
I noticed that ridiculous statement by Varner, too. Good job explaining why it’s so ridiculous.
@1 hit the nail on the head with the cost of accountability to the benefit.
She buried the leed and so did you Goldy.
Yep!
Don’t forget: vote Bonnie Mager for Spokane County Commish!
http://www.votebonniemager.com/
Well, I guess if you can’t find the right screed to take down the schools, you just make one up, eh Lynne.
Shit, I wish I knew where 99.99% of my body parts were.
@6: Bonnie was the Eastern Field Rep for WEC when I was on the board a while back. Great Lady! Spokane couldn’t have a better person looking out for them.
One could fairly assume that the US Department of Defense pays far more money in auditing and accounting that the Seattle schools, and for all their money, they can’t account for billions of contracted dollars. Makes Seattle look downright frugal.
So Varner thinks Seattle Schools should spend $500,000 in additional auditing costs to make sure they know where the last $7K of stuff is?
Lynne Varner is an idiot. Her reasoning is nearly always specious. Here is a prime example of her inability to form a cogent argument.
Somehow Goldy’s slobbering libtardos missed this. Ain’t it your money Seattle moron?
And like always Goldy focuses on the minutia. If this was a Republican led district Goldy would be crying fowl!
So what is worf really saying in his link…?
Now that’s funny!
First of all, Goldy, you should go back to school and learn some basic mathematics: It’s 98.68 percent.
You could at least care enough to get that part right.
While not a bad average, those aren’t private corporate dollars you’re talking about, they’re tax dollars. Slight difference.
Secondly, I gather from the lack of comments on the subject that your gang of sycophants didn’t bother to read the part of the report that talks about the $1.8 million stolen from the general fund by the district to advertise contracts for the district to a niche group.
How many more teacher salaries and/or more teaching equipment could that have bought, Goldy? C’mon, just give me a guess.
For someone who cries when his daughter’s school gets closed and claims to care about teacher quantity and quality, you sure picked the wrong snippet from this story to bitch about.