Carrying the first bond measure she’d overseen since taking the reins of the San Francisco Unified School District three years ago, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman marched into the Department of Elections last month and delivered the thick document.
The $295 million bond measure is the first bond proposal to be placed on the November ballot and may be the only bond measure voters will consider this year, according to Rachel Gosiengfiao, campaign services manager for the elections department.
It is also the first bond measure the school district has submitted in six years.
The ceremonial delivery was rather calm, but as election season draws near, bond supporters are anticipating a storm of criticism in the form of a campaign lambasting the school district for its past mismanagement of bond dollars.
Accusations that employees had fleeced the school district out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and subsequent proof that some did, continue to tarnish the district’s reputation.
From 1988 to 1997, the school district oversaw $337 million worth of school bonds. Rumors continue to fly to the effect that millions of those dollars were misspent.
Most fingers point to former schools Superintendent Bill Rojas, who headed the school district from 1992 to 1999 before leaving to take a job in Dallas. Rojas has been singled out as the primary cause of years of fiscal mismanagement, misspending and, in some cases, the embezzlement of millions of district dollars.
TWO OFFICIALS INDICTED
When Ackerman came on board in 2000, she sensed that something was seriously wrong and called in the FBI to investigate. That criminal investigation is still ongoing, and while no charges have been brought against Rojas, two officials who worked under him have been indicted.
Desmond McQuoid, the district’s former security director, pleaded guilty to mail fraud last year in a scheme that bilked the school district out of $200,000. Tim Tronson, the district’s former facilities director, is currently standing trial in Sacramento on 22 felony counts, including the misappropriation of district monies in connection with a $30 million sham contract.
“We’re going after these people,” said Board of Education member Jill Wynns, who added that the FBI investigation was expected to result in more arrests and restitution to the district.
Rojas’ departure also led to a state audit that revealed shoddy accounting practices and reckless overspending by the district.
Upon her arrival, Ackerman was forced to cut several programs that affected administration and classrooms because Rojas had implemented them without the resources necessary to sustain them.
RIGHTING WRONGS
Wynns is familiar with the school district’s bond history.
In 1988, she was credited with organizing the community to pass a $90 million bond measure, one of the first major bonds passed in San Francisco.
In 1992, she was elected to the Board of Education and oversaw the school district throughout what is considered its most tumultuous period.
She also served as board president for two years beginning in 2001.
“It was hard to see what was happening here,” Wynns told The Independent, referring to the previous administration’s accounting practices.
Prior to Ackerman’s arrival, there was no districtwide accounting system monitoring each department’s spending, Wynns said.
The facilities department never had to seek approval for expenditures, nor did it need to show its books to any person outside of the department.
Making matters worse is the complex nature of the revenue streams funneling into the facilities department.
Bond dollars, deferred-maintenance monies from the state and hardship funds all trickle into the facilities department, and the only thing they have in common is that they are earmarked for facility projects.
While certain facility projects were eligible to receive funding only from certain sources, Tronson, the former facilities director hired by Rojas, instead pooled all the monies into one jackpot.
“They were not careful about record keeping,” Wynns said, describing the accounting system as a “trading system.”
SEARCHING FOR TRUST
District officials and fellow bond supporters have a rough road ahead if they are to convince voters to agree to give the school district a fresh start by passing the proposed $295 million bond measure.
“It is still very confusing for people,” said Novella Smith, a district parent. “Sometimes it is hard to see the difference between mismanagement and misspending.”
Smith is one of many parents leading the campaign in support of the bond measure. She agrees that the district’s past may not sit well with some residents, but she hopes they believe, as she does, in second chances.
Smith said that she initially was among the nonbelievers who wrote the district off as a bureaucracy incapable of managing its money and its facilities. But then, she said, she sat in bed one night and read a year’s worth of correspondence between the district’s Bond Oversight Citizens Advisory Committee and the district’s top dogs, and she began to see a different side to the story.
Smith said she read a litany of requests from citizens demanding an audit of the district’s budget because they suspected that the district was spending beyond its means and that the facilities department was operating on shaky ground.
“It became really clear that it was completely confused in that department,” Smith said.
SKEPTICISM LINGERS
Even before the Board of Education gave its final approval to the upcoming bond measure, Parents Fighting for Neighborhood Schools, a group of parents living in the west side of the city, submitted paid ballot arguments opposing it.
They asserted that the district had managed its money poorly and was now forced to ask taxpayers to bail it out.
Marie Crabtree, a mother of a special education student at Lincoln High School, said she had mixed feelings about the bond measure.
“Part of me says this would be great,” Crabtree said. “My doubt is whether the money will be spent according to what the schools’ needs are.”
She said that the school district must get better at making its records open and available to the public and at bolstering its accountability.
Crabtree commended Ackerman for righting the many wrongs of the past but pointed out that more must be done.
While the district claims that its operations have become more accessible to the public, Crabtree said it was still difficult to get information in a timely fashion from district officials.
When Crabtree began questioning capacity issues at the burgeoning Lincoln High School, where her daughter attends classes, she got the “runaround,” she said, and, unsuccessful at getting the information she sought from the school district, she took her fight to the state and to the San Francisco Fire Department.
“No parent or person in the community should have to do this,” Crabtree said.
She said that regular financial reports should be available through the school district and that the district had an obligation to show parents, and not just tell them, that their money was being properly spent.
“They need to break it down,” she said. “They need to be accountable to the community.”