Speaking Personally: Five must go

After the last month, there's one phrase I wish I could erase from the English language. 

 

"Mistakes were made."

 

It's been offered a lot lately as the reason to stop talking about, or reporting on, the money mess at the Willow Springs R-IV School District. It's a phrase in the passive voice, assigning no person the responsibility of the action, and really, that's why we did keep reporting on it. My readers wanted to know who made mistakes. Questions and ugly accusations hung in the air.

 

This publication has been rightly criticized for the many consecutive weeks it took us to unravel the tangle of mistakes that led to a district reserve fund balance of less than 5 percent. Honestly, we could have wrapped up everything in three weeks if not for the smoke and mirrors the school board offered when we approached them for answers. 

 

If it seems like I have been picking on Superintendent Dr. Marty Spence throughout my articles, it's only because he was the only person I could quote as saying anything remotely useful. Still, it has been a month-long process of cajoling, pestering and even paying for public records to prove it was, indeed, only mistakes that got us here. At one point, however, there was a delay of almost 10 days because of a near-total breakdown in communication with the district. 

 

Trust, but verify, has always been the plan, and the verification took much longer than it should have because of the way the district has communicated. Initially vague responses that completely ignored the messy budget routine led to time-consuming speculation about where the money had gone. Without a solid budget to reference, I, a lone political-science major, verified legitimate spending by sifting through accounts transaction-by-transaction.

 

The "mistakes were made" narrative is right about one thing, though. Having verified this, it is time to move on to solutions. Not with empty or performative positivity, but with intentional language and unflinching courage to face all the unpleasantness that must happen now. 

 

Facing what happens now

 

The school board and a green superintendent, Spence, have been bad stewards of your money. 

 

The board failed continuously for two years to appropriately manage Spence. Almost $4 million oozed out of school coffers during that time, and this left the district in a perilous position. Given the information and opportunity to make better choices as recently as January, school-board members failed again. 

 

In March and April, they signed us up for another year of salary expenses we can ill afford, while stringing Spence along without renewing his contract. The reality of moving on is the district will have to lose at least 20 staff members, many of them likely teachers. 

 

Moving forward will not be a positive experience. 

 

Five of the seven current school-board members are responsible for that. Mac Gum, Brent Colley, Adam Webb, Matt Hobson and Scott Foster heard the school's own auditor warn that repeating spending patterns would mean trouble, but then they approved employment contracts paying out more than $300,000 more this year than last year. 

 

Criticizing the right people for their mistakes is the first step towards the fix, but before we get to my suggestion, there's something I must explain. 

 

It was their money too

 

There is no vengeance to be had here. There's no getting that money back. There's no lawsuit we, the people, can file. Individual school-board members' assets are not tied to taxpayer money. Honestly, it was their money, too.

 

The Missouri State Auditor's Office could investigate. I have verified they are receiving whistleblower reports about the school district. If they tear apart the books, the state auditor's investigators will find what the independent auditor, financial consultant and this newspaper have found.

 

Our school board approved budgets with financial acumen that would have bankrupted a lemonade stand.

 

Then, the state auditor will leave and publish a report. Oh, and we'll have to pay for the audit. That bill would be in the tens of thousands ... money the district can't afford to pay.

 

Now, there's something we can all do at the ballot box, and I'm going to get to that. But for now, I want to speak directly to the people who are responsible for the position that we are in because five of you have an opportunity to do the right thing.

 

To the school board

 

You must resign now.

 

Staying for the clean up is not taking accountability. It's not the right thing to do, and I sincerely believe all of you want to do the right thing.

 

You really did your best. You did not make these mistakes on purpose, and yet for a group of people who are so anxious to do the right thing, you continuously made such poor decisions. To fail so badly at a time of feast and festival in the history of the school district, when federal money was flowing like water, only means we cannot have you at the helm during times of famine and trouble.

 

It is my unpleasant duty to say that good intentions are not good enough. 

 

Board members, you do not have the skills, and cannot acquire the skills in time, to save the district from financial peril. The best you can offer is to rubber stamp the suggestions of the independent financial consultant you hired. 

 

That's not enough. Rubber stamping is what got us here. 

 

If you managed to miss the blaring mistakes of the last two years, I'm sorry to say I have no confidence in your ability to recognize good or bad financial advice from any source.

 

Maybe you were vague in your carefully prepared statements in the beginning because you truly did not understand what happened at first. Maybe you wanted to control the narrative by releasing information only via school-board meetings because that's what you have been trained to do. 

 

There was a moment to be frank about the crisis, but it has passed. I, for one, no longer trust you to be clear about hard truths moving forward. 

 

The best thing you can do is to step aside and allow us to source from within the community those who do have the skills and training to fix this.

 

 Rebuilding after resignations

 

If the five of you resign at once, under state law, the county commission can appoint new board members to fill the unexpired terms. Three of those terms, Webb's, Colley's and Hobson's, are up next April. 

 

Three qualified interim members (maybe an accountant, a city administrator and a former school board president?) can step into the breach and use their skills to guide the district up and out of this mess. Their terms of service would be truly wretched, hard, thankless work, but mercifully brief. 

 

It would be a way for the most qualified among us to briefly assume legal authority to make the best decisions the minds of Willow Springs can offer. It's an opportunity for firing decisions to be made by individuals who are not kin to anyone currently employed in this school district. 

 

Coach Gum, Coach Colley, Matt, Adam, and Scott – please step aside now, not as a punishment, but to seize the opportunity to bring in local fixers. 

 

The ballot box

 

An embarrassingly small number of registered voters showed up to vote in the last school-board election. Countywide, the turnout was only 6.5 percent. I've watched it happen over and over. A small group of people, about 700, have been showing up and voting in the folks they like. Most of the time, school-board elections in Willow Springs are contested. There are usually issues where the candidates differ. In short, each vote is weighty. 

 

Voters, when you go to the polls in April, remember what you have learned this month about the job of a school board. For the foreseeable future, we must have business-minded board members. Pick the one who is best with numbers, even if he isn't your favorite person. 

 

Policy decisions will take a back seat to financial ones in the coming school years. And a sparkling personality on the school board won't matter if the district has to start slashing jobs and programs. 

 

After a fiscal debacle like this, I will be disgusted if we see the same kind of voter turnout this April. Your vote matters so much in local elections. As long as I'm pointing fingers, let's face the fact that we, as voters, deserve some of the blame here, too. 

 

Pick a candidate to rally behind now. Stay up to date on the issues. This publication can help you with that. 

 

And then vote. 

 

We will get the government we deserve.