Improperly allocating teacher salaries to federal programs delivered a $460,000 blow to the Greenwood School District’s budget this year, and board members wanted more answers Thursday on how it happened.
“I still don’t know how, exactly, that happened,” Board Member Kathy Whicker said during a work session, one week after the board scrutinized the district’s budget in a specially called meeting.
According to Shaquita Burke, the district’s business manager, salaries for 11 teachers that should’ve been paid for from district maintenance funds were being paid for out of federal programs. This situation, which is known as “supplanting,” resulted in an additional $460,000 in unanticipated expenses to the district’s operating budget.
Dr. Angelia Bluitt, the district’s federal programs director, said Thursday that the state sets out minimum teacher-to-student ratios that must be met before federal funds can be used to pay additional staff.
“Before we’re able to pay for anything out of federal programs, we must first meet those guidelines,” said Bluitt, who began work with the district in January.
Superintendent Montrell Greene said the issues first came to light as then-Federal Programs Director LeTina Guice was preparing a report in October. Guice resigned from the district in December, citing health reasons.
Greene said he requested help from the Mississippi Department of Education in November. State officials helped clear up the supplanting issues at Threadgill Elementary, but other payroll problems with federal programs remained elsewhere in the district.
Burke said she worked with Guice, and then with Bluitt, to sort out the district’s payrolls.
“When Dr. Bluitt came in, it was a work in progress and she finished it up. We were able to determine exactly where we were with the number of the teachers the district should’ve been paying for versus what we were paying for,” Burke said. “We also looked at our staffing such as instructional coaches and other positions to see if there was something that the district was paying for that should’ve been paid for out of federal programs.”
Bluitt said she worked hard to sort out any of the issues but wasn’t sure what led to the placement of too many teachers under federal programs.
“Now how all those staff got on there, I don’t know,” Bluitt said. One possibility she pointed to was that the ratios that determine how many teachers can be on federal programs fluctuate year to year based on enrollment figures.
Greene said the board’s decision to cover the cost of the salaries during a January meeting was a prudent one, even though it expanded the district’s projected operating shortfall for the 2013-2014 school year, which Burke said currently stands at $1.4 million.
If the Mississippi Department of Education had “done an audit — and actually they ended up doing an audit, and federal programs was part of it — it could’ve and probably would’ve shown up then,” Greene said. “It didn’t, because we actually addressed it.”
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
