A question of financial accountability

The March 22, 2012 issue of the West Marin Citizen reported that the LWIP parents preparing a charter petition have hired an unnamed lawyer and financial accountant to prepare the charter and financial documents. As a parent in LWIP it would be very helpful to finally get the names of these consultants, copies of the contracts, and information about how much they have been paid. It would also be nice to know how the LWIP Administrative Council (AC) has spent the money we parents donated 2010-11 and 2011-12. It is impossible to know since we parents have never been given any financial reports. That is a troubling track record for a group that is now asking to be given control over much more money as a charter school.

The current District budget presented last Tuesday shows LWIP with about $58,000. That was news to me because the only financial documents I have ever gotten are proposed budgets. We have never gotten a balance sheet of what has come in and gone out. How is this money being spent? It is supposed to be used to hire our wonderful specialty teachers. But it would be nice to know details.

I ran a non-profit organization and prepared balance statements for my board of directors. LWIP is supposed to have been doing that as a matter of fiscal accountability but it has not. The AC has never once prepared a balance sheet to show what has happened with the many tens of thousands of dollars donated by LWIP parents to the program. I know because I have asked about 3 times at AC and Parent Council meetings during the past 19 months and despite being told it is "a good idea" I am still waiting.

This lack of basic fiscal accountability indicates that those proposing to take our program charter are neither prepared nor experienced in managing money—especially taxpayer money. As a result they will need to hire expensive accountants and auditors to do this work thereby taking money out of the classroom and away from the education of our children. Is this what we really want?

One needs to ask how these LWIP parents can be expected to be given perhaps $300,000 to $400,000 to run a charter school when during the past nearly 2 years they have never once accounted for the donations they have received and how they have been spent.

This is a critical issue that needs to be addressed for several reasons. First, there are numerous cases of California charter schools going under due to fiscal mismanagement and corruption. In San Diego several charters left the District with unpaid debts that can never be collected.

Second, if LWIP goes charter and then fails we will no longer have a Waldorf program, period. Wouldn't we be more secure staying as a program and continuing to organize to expand our program, keep our teachers and elect more supporters to the Board of Trustees? Our track record in the past two years is actually not bad. We fought off two layoffs last year and added a grade this year.

Third, going charter may require we parents handle a lot more responsibility for less return and more risk. As I will examine in future blog posts, we may end up with less money per student—all our children in LWIP and the entire District— at the same time we now find ourselves responsible for hiring and firing teachers and contracting with the District for services and facilities. Money will be drained from the classroom to consultants, lawyers, an expensive administrator, and to the District for the work it will have to do monitoring our operations.

We need to thoughtfully ask if all of this is really worth it? And above all we should be asking if we really can handle it.

The unresolved questions about how our parent donations are being spent should be seriously seen as a possible indicator of things to come.