The principal of Burlington High School authorized “thousands of dollars” in payments from student account funds without proper documentation, according to Burlington School District director of finance Nathan Lavery.
Revenue from student parking permits was improperly used to buy professional baseball tickets for employees, he wrote in a June 13 memo to the Burlington School Board. And other payments to high school staff appear to meet the definition of wages rather than reimbursements, and should have been made via payroll — not student activity accounts, Lavery wrote.
The memo never mentions longtime BHS principal Amy Mellencamp by name, but singles her out by title and says she failed to properly manage student account funds. Details on the dollar amounts are not specified. Seven Days has filed a public records request seeking the full report on student accounts.
Mellencamp strongly disagrees with Lavery’s conclusions and said she knew nothing about the memo until it was presented to the school board Tuesday night.
“This is the case of his never asking questions of administrators, including myself, and just going ahead and making assumptions without gaining appropriate information,” Mellencamp said via email.
Checks and balances are built into the system, she added. “We have tight accounting practices and are proud of our stewardship of these funds on behalf of the students, parents, teachers and community members involved.”
Mellencamp has led BHS for 17 years, and is serving her final month there. She’s been reassigned under a controversial principal shuffle announced by superintendent of schools Yaw Obeng in May. She becomes principal of C.P. Smith Elementary School July 1.
Lavery’s memo details problems with student accounts throughout the district. But it flagged Burlington High School for more serious issues.
Practices at BHS “circumvent procedures established to control spending by utilizing student activity accounts to pay for substantial reimbursements to employees,” the memo reads. “This end-run around the established procedures is compounded by the fact that thousands of dollars of reimbursements have been paid without adequate backup documentation, calling into question the propriety of these reimbursements.”
The memo went on to say: “The only approver on these payments is the principal, who repeatedly failed to ensure the presence of sufficient documentation prior to authorizing payment. In other instances, documentation that is available reflects inappropriate spending. For example, funds generated through parking fees assessed to students were used to purchase professional baseball tickets for staff.”
Obeng, Lavery and school board chair Mark Porter did not respond to messages seeking comment Thursday. Vice chair Stephanie Seguino issued this statement: “We are of course concerned with any areas in which there are deficiencies in financial controls and practices. The board is committed to establishing sound financial management practices and to improving the community’s confidence in how taxpayer dollars for education are used.”
The audit has been helpful to the business office by identifying methods for enhanced oversight of student accounts, and the board looks forward to the implementation of the auditor’s recommendations, Seguino said.
Mellencamp and Obeng butted heads earlier this year. She publicly challenged Obeng’s plans to cut high school courses and teachers in response to declining enrollment and a budget gap. Many parents defended Mellencamp and criticized her reassignment as punitive. Mellencamp said she had wanted to spend her last year at the high school before retiring next June. But she also pledged to be a team player.
The student account problem is one of several financial issues Lavery has attempted to tackle. He joined the district in 2014 after deficits and overspending hit a crisis point and led to the exodus of former superintendent Jeanne Collins and other administrators, including the business manager.
Annual audits of the school district in fiscal 2014 and 2015 noted problems with the use and management of student account funds. Outside auditors recommended a thorough review of accounts, new procedures and more oversight by the district’s central business office.
Outside auditors visited six district schools on May 19 and 20. Lavery summarized their initial findings in the memo to the board this week and said all the schools “evidenced practices that must be changed,” with BHS as the school that had the “most problems.”
The auditors completed an in-depth review that Lavery is now examining, according the memo.
Another problem cited: High school athletics gate receipts are being deposited into BHS student activity funds, but school district revenue should go into the district’s general fund, according to Lavery.
“We believe that this practice has been longstanding and may be the result of an ‘understanding’ between the principal and prior central office administrators; however it is not an appropriate arrangement,” Lavery wrote.
Mellencamp said the student accounts have nothing to do with the school budget paid for by taxpayers. The accounts are funded from donations, ticket sales and other revenue that come in for clubs and activities, sports teams, field trips, scholarships, special events and activities, she said.
“Given the tremendous work and generosity of students, parents, community members and teachers, we are able to support school activities that add to the life, culture, and spirit of BHS,” she said.
On Friday, Mellencamp confirmed via email that BHS purchased 40 Red Sox tickets for a June 23 school employee team-building outing. The bleacher tickets were purchased in a discount block at $12.25 each for a total cost of $490, according to Mellencamp. Student parking fee revenue was used to buy the tickets, with the understanding that employees will pay for their tickets and reimburse the account, she wrote.
“The arrangement is like other events whose initial costs are covered by later ticket sales, such as with the prom, field trips, and many other students events and activities,” Mellencamp wrote.
She again defended her management of student accounts. “I can say that I have not authorized any reimbursements for any expenses without proper receipts or documentation. During my time at the high school, there have been at least five different superintendents, and the monthly reports and annual district audits completed never revealed or raised any of these issues, nor were concerns presented to me during those 17 years. “
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Wait . . the Burlington Schools have slush funds that buy professional baseball tickets for teachers . What??!! Can you say ZERO salary increases this contract? What else are they getting from the slush funds?
It’s not like the school wasted tons of money on finding and then sneaking some guy across the border to be the superintendent.
I imagine she will be closely watched at her next job. Convenient “transfer”.
…This is unfortunate but the district used taxpayer dollars and spent $40,000 on recruiting the superintendent. Where is the reporting on Administrative spending?
I doubt there is much inappropriate going on here, but it does not make complete sense. Could the teachers not come up with $12.25 to pay for their tickets up front? Why go through complicated book keeping to buy the tickets from the tickets sales account and then reimburse the ticket sales account later? And if athletics is supported by the school budget, why does the ticket sale revenue not go directly back to the district? Perhaps such loose accounting measures were acceptable in the past, but school property taxes are a MUCH larger percentage of residents’ income recently than they were in the past. K-12 education is big business and should be treated as such.
The “reactive discipline” used on employees who are advocates of one particular thing or another is reflective of an exclusionary mindset and counterproductive to equity. Rather than positively supporting members of our community and their perspectives, the central office is reacting punitively, with the underlying message being that everyone should fall in line. When this kind of practice is used with students, especially ones with diverse needs, it only leads to defensive feelings and stifles participation in education. This framework is the foundation of the “school-to-prison pipeline”.
While there is little concern shown for the needs of the “privileged middle class” students and families – the decisions made by this administration also hurt the more vulnerable demographics in our community. The anxiety and defensiveness these practices generate within our school community do not create the positive school climates that students with a trauma background – which our refugee population has – so desperately need. Exclusionary practices lead to higher rates of suspensions/expulsions and drop-outs, which we all know is connected with larger issues of systemic racism. Our schools deserve to be institutions with positive, supportive practices that start with leadership raising the bar.
Right on jhilt123!
This district needs to find ways to value and empower principals and teachers! Providing opportunities for input rather than punishing it would inspire our community. Leaders should model the beliefs, behaviors, language and attitudes they want their staff to adopt. We need to see cooperative interactions rather than a tone of conflict.
Molly Walsh is a muckracker…. the district is in shambles, moral is way down in the staff and the superintendent is nuts.
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Dr. Mellencamp is an excellent principal and BHS has been fortunate to have her. I doubt that she would “mis-manage funds” as the article and district memo implies. I’m sure this isn’t the whole story. Sounds like it wasn’t handled properly by the district…no surprise there…which has a poor track record itself. And another misstep by the new Superintendent’s leadership skills, throwing a well-respected administrator under the bus.
After 17 years of service to this community, it’s families and children – this memo drags Mellancamp through the mud on a petty issue. The Burlington School District’s treatment of Mellancamp is Nixonian. The political bigotry and intolerance toward her and her advocacy for BHS (because it goes against the agenda of BSD leadership) is sad. It does seem to serve as a nice distraction from the numerous questions remaining regarding the budget cuts while bloated administrative costs continue.
Seriously? First you have a controversial hiring of a superintendent that is dividing the makeup of the Burlington School system, and then you have a financial administrator who all of a sudden singles out a principal that has been dedicated to the system for so many years and doing what all administrators have been doing with funds from student activities, etc. Does this sound like someone is just trying to get even with her criticisms on how the superintendent is administrating? Burlington, wake up. You have employees in your system that are heartbroken in their jobs because of the way things are now being done. What once was a great educational system has fallen apart. If anyone should be brought to task, it might be the school board that has wasted taxpayer’s money on recruiting and paying off in thousands of dollars to get Obeng into the States. What is the first thing he does?? He purchases a house in South Burlington knowing full well he was to live within the Burlington city. And his excuse?? He didn’t want his kids to be the children of the superintendent in the same school district. If you didn’t like the rule, you should not have taken the job. I personally feel this is a slap in the face to Amy Mellencamp, after all the years she has given, that Mr. Obeng is taking her out of the high school for her last year in the district. Furthermore I find it distressing that her expertise with that school is being ignored. Maybe it’s time to think about a different superintendent.
In a community like ours which advocates for self-sufficiency and nurturing our local resources against the giants (gosh we held out for so long against Walmart!) it’s baffling that we have resorted to the equivalent of “ubering” in a superintendent – at great cost. The “buy local”, “support local food”, “bank local” activism here seems to have missed a big part of our consumer dollar – “local labor”. This is another example of the unfair competition that is thrown against small communities and it’s labor force who have deep roots and ownership of our part of the world. The uncertainty Burlington’s schools now face with future governance approaches shifting is in the hands of an outside manager with unknown loyalty to the community. Is it fair to the children to wager such risk?