EDLD 5342- Part 1- Code of Ethics

Standard 1.2:  The educator shall not knowingly misappropriate, divert, or use monies, personnel, property, or equipment committed to his or her charge for personal gain or advantage. There was an assistant principal in my former district that stole fundraising money out of the school vault. She used the money to pay her personal bills.

Short term consequence: The assistant principal was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Long term consequence:  The assistant principal had to reimburse the money she stole from the district and was dismissed from her position after the investigation was concluded.  There were also legal charges made against her.

Preventive Strategy: The Superintendent was able to apply laws, policies, and procedures in a fair and reasonable manner because the district had procedures in place. However, the Superintendent and district administration reexamined how finances and fundraising money was handled in the district. The money in the safe was to be deposited within 24 hours. If any money was to be placed into the safe then two people in the front office had to sign-off on the amount of money being place in the safe and it had to be verified by the principal. A new safe was purchased for every school in the district with a key and combination entry. Then the combination was to be changed every time an administrator left the district.

Standard 1.3:  The educator shall not submit fraudulent requests for reimbursement, expenses or pay.  I currently work in a district office. We travel throughout the district and are reimbursed for our mileage. It is on the honor system. However, we had one employee turn in a mileage form one month that had more mileage listed on the log than what the employee actually drove.  

Short term consequence:  The employee received a written reprimand and had to reimburse the district the money she had requested for reimbursement.

Long term consequence:  The employee must now seek approval before traveling to a campus and must turn in her calendar monthly to her supervisor.

Standard 1.6:  The educator shall not falsify records, or direct or coerce others to do so.  In a district that I worked in a teacher falsified a student’s progress on a student’s IEP goals and objectives. It appeared to the parent the student was making progress on items she was not progressing at all. This was discovered when the student transferred to another school in the district. The new school could not understand how the last teacher had arrived at her numbers of mastery criteria and called in district administration. When the teacher was asked for her data and how she arrived at her numbers the teacher could not produce any data and said she had made it up.

Short- term consequence:  The short-term consequence to this action was the teacher was put on administrative leave. Also, the district had to provide extended school year services and compensatory services to the student.

Long term consequences:  The teacher was allowed to keep her job. However, a written reprimand is in her permanent human resource file. The teacher will have a difficult time being transferred between schools or being employed by another district.

Preventive Strategy: The teacher is required to turn her data and IEP Progress reports into the principal every nine weeks. Also, the ARD facilitators and are required to look at IEP Progress report notes before the documents go home to parents. Also, district administration has provided more training on data collection. This issue is example of how the Superintendent and other district leaders can monitor and address ethical issues impacting education.

Standard 2.2. The educator shall not harm others by knowingly making false statements about a colleague or the school system. Sadly, this happens much more often than it should in public education. I could tell countless stories of teachers making up stories about other colleagues. I have been on the end of having someone make false statements about me and ended up costing me a principal position. I had a fellow colleague make up a story about something I supposedly posted on Facebook and reported it to the Superintendent. However, the Superintendent did not know how to interact with district staff, students, school board, and community in a professional and ethical manner when handling this situation and it was not handled in an appropriate way. The rumor spread and it cost me the principal job I was up for at the time.

Standard 2.5: The educator shall not discriminate against or coerce a colleague on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, disability, or family status. While conducting interviews for a position that was going to be split between two campuses we had a panel on the interviewing committee. We had an excellent candidate and everyone except one person wanted to hire this person. When asked why she did not want to hire this person “She said I don’t like her dialect and I don’t think she will fit in with our clientele of the school”. She was referring to the person being African-American

Reflection on EDLD 5342

While reflecting back on this course I think about all of the new knowledge I gained that will improve my skills as a campus and district leader, especially in the area of school finance. Before this course, I had little knowledge on school finance, especially the Superintendent’s role in the budget process. I gained knowledge through the Competency 8 Self-assessment, the lectures, interview, readings, weekly assignments and activities.

            At this beginning of this course, I marked mostly I’s on the Competency 8 Self-Assessment. In almost every area of this competency I wanted to improve my knowledge and skills. After completing this course, I am able to with more confidence mark I am competent in most areas of knowledge and skill. I still believe I need more practical application to feel I have strengths in the budget process. I do believe I am competent in many more areas then I was before this course started. I do believe I could apply my knowledge in the area of acquire, allocate, and manage resources according to district vision and priorities, including obtaining and using funding from various sources, apply legal concepts, regulations, and codes as required and use revenue forecasting and enrollment forecasting to address personnel and budgetary needs accurately.

            The lectures, interviews, readings and weekly assignment allowed me to expand my learning on school finance. By starting first with the history of the financial system it allowed me to have an understanding of why the system is the way it is currently. I did not realize how many events have occurred that have shaped what the school finance system has become today in Texas. Through examining these historical events, I now have a better understanding of why our State educational system is in the financial trouble we are in currently. Also, by studying the terms adequacy, equity and efficiency I also understand now why there have been some lawsuits against the State and why there is going to be lawsuit over the current financial situation. Public school financing is a complex and controversial system. 

Also, before this class, I had never really understood the state formula or even looked at the state formula. I still have a lot of learning to do in this area, but at least I have better understanding of the state formula. I knew student attendance was important but I didn’t realize how important. I also knew we received extra funding for special education students, but did not realize it also included gifted and talented, bilingual, vocational and compensatory education. The WADA makes perfect sense to me because students in those programs need additional services, which cost the district more. I am looking forward to learning more in this area and seeing what my peers feel impacts the state formula.

            Finally, studying the TEA Budgeting Guidelines taught me a great deal about school finance.  The TEA Budgeting Guidelines is a wealth of information for a Superintendent while going through the budget process. After reviewing these guidelines, I learned about different budgetary approaches, legal requirements, roles and responsibilities, revenue estimates, financial forecasting and planning, budgeting for grant programs and multi-year construction projects. From these guidelines, I will be able to use this information in helping me develop a district budget or contribute to developing a district budget because this document walks a person through developing a budget from the beginning to the end. It also provides the guidelines set forward by the Texas Education Agency. Ultimately, it is the Superintendent’s role and responsibility to develop the district budget and this document will be a tool to guide the Superintendent through the budget process.

            I look forward to expanding my knowledge even more in this area. However, I believe this class gave me new knowledge and the ability to improve my skills as a campus and district leader, especially in the area of school finance.  

Week Four Assignment, Part 4 – Understanding Personnel Salaries in District Budgets

The education of students is labor intensive and the Board of Trustees places a high priority on funding direct classroom instruction. This is reflected in the large portion of Clear Creek ISD District's budget for payroll costs. The composition of the District's workforce is determined by the staffing policies and guidelines of the Board of Trustees on the basis of projected student enrollment and curriculum requirements. Clear Creek ISD spends 68.7% of its General Fund budget on Instruction and Related Services. These dollars go directly into the classroom and pay for teacher salaries and classroom/campus supplies. Almost eighty five percent (84.9%) of spending in the General Fund is for personnel, as a result a large part of this budget goes toward personnel and benefits associated with our classroom teachers. The District maintains a very low administrative cost ratio in comparison to the Texas Education Agency’s standard benchmark. For a large school district, 25,000 students or more, the Agency benchmark is an administrative cost ratio of 11%. Clear Creek’s administrative cost ratio is 4.7%.

In these time economic times like this it is hard to think about a five percent salary increase for all personnel. This last school year my district reduced 171 full time positions through attribution to deal with the State’s shortfall in funding. Most likely another 125 positions will be eliminated in the 2012-2013 school year. This last school year, was the first item since I entered education I did not receive a raise or at least my step. Our salaries were frozen and most likely this year our salaries will be too. However, no one in my district was too upset with not getting a raise because first we are fortunate to have a position, but also we are one of the highest paying districts in our area. We were also one of the few districts in our area that was not forced to do a reduction in force. Clear Creek ISD does not experience higher turnover rate and higher salaries is one of the reasons. Our district is able to recruit and main highly qualified teachers and staff.

Everyone would enjoy a five percent raise, but at this time I actually think the only positive that would come out of a raise would be morale would go up, but we would have to cut other items or programs from the district. By not offering a raise, we our able to maintain our fund balance at an acceptable level and maintain established educational programs. As long as my district can maintain salaries that are at a level comparable to area/regional districts then I think we will be able to maintain the excellent, highly qualified teachers we have currently in this district.

Interview with Deputy Superintendent- Audit Process

1.      How is the external auditor selected?

Every four years school districts develop a request for qualifications for an external auditor.  The request highlights the district’s requirements (previous work with school districts, size of audit team, etc) and preferences.  Audit firms submit documentation highlighting their experience, audit team, audit plan, etc.  The district develops a review committee to review documentation and interview the finalists.  This committee makes a recommendation of the most qualified firm.  At that point, the district negotiates price with the finalist to get to an agreed upon cost of the services.  If agreement is reached then the recommendation is taken to the Board of Trustees for review and approval.

2.      How does the auditor conduct the audit?

The audit is conducted in several phases.  In the summer, auditors come on site and review transactions through June and perform some testing on the district’s control procedures.  This generally is a one week process with several auditors.  They review selected purchases to ensure the purchasing and receiving process worked as planned.  They will then return for final audit work in December.  This is usually a two week process with several auditors.  They review transactions through year end and do more testing of our systems and processes.  The final audit is prepared and presented to the Board of Trustees at the January board meeting.

3. What does the audit conclude about district financial procedures and actions?

The audit statement is very concise letter that summarizes their findings.  It says among other things that:

“In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the respective financial position of the governmental activities, the business-type activities,  each major fund, and the aggregate remaining fund information of the District as of August 31, 2010, and the respective changes in financial position and, where applicable, cash flows, thereof for the year then ended in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.”

4. How are the results communicated?

Results are communicated through a management letter as well as a Certified Annual Financial Report.  The most recent CAFR is in the link provided: http://www2.ccisd.net/Libraries/Finance/2010_CCISD_CAFR.sflb.ashx

The new one will not be completed until January

M&O Budget

There are two sources of funding for the Maintenance and Operations Fund (M&O Fund). The first source of funding is local property taxes. Clear Creek ISD’s general fund is comprised of 56.7% of revenue coming from local property taxes. The other source of funding for the M&O Fund is revenue from state sources and that makes up 40.9% of the general fund.

      This fund is established to account for resources financing the fundamental operations of the district. The education of students is labor intensive. This is reflected in the large portion of the District's budget for payroll costs. The composition of the District's workforce is determined by the staffing policies and guidelines of the Board of Trustees on the basis of projected student enrollment and curriculum requirements.

In Clear Creek ISD 68.7% of the general fund budget is on instructional and related services. Almost eighty five percent (84.9%) of spending in the

General Fund is for personnel, as a result a large part of this budget goes toward personnel and benefits associated with our classroom teachers. The second largest expenditure class in Governmental Funds is debt service. Since it has been a fast growth district, Clear Creek has issued almost $450 million in bonds over the last seven years and thirteen percent (13.3%) of its governmental fund monies in the Debt Service Funds. Clear Creek ISD does not qualify for any State funding to cover debt services.

      Revenue in this general fund is estimated at $284,966,000 while expenditures are budgeted at $288,347,391. The General Fund budget is balanced with a proposed operating transfer from the capital replacement fund of $3,400,000. This provides a very small increase in fund balance ($18,609).