Regarding the Brockton Public Schools $14M deficit

Regarding the newly-discovered “deficit”/”shortfall” in the Brockton Public Schools, the responsibility lies with the BPS administration, the soon-to-be-former Superintendent, the School Committee (of which the Mayor is chair), the Mayor and his staff and department heads.

For example, let’s suppose that it turns out to be a so-called “accounting error.” Sounds quite the opposite from someone stealing $14M – which was an initial rumor – right?

However, even “accounting errors” are not an excuse to be in this situation. I’m not a CPA but have done accounting for a living for a long time (private sector CFO; managed federal grants for the City of Boston and non-profits; and more) and any good bookkeeper has systems to double-check for errors and to adjust for actual vs budget. That’s why we do reconciliations and “close the books” on a regimented basis… routines that many find dreadfully-boring but we actually get satisfaction from.

An audit is a similar procedure but – a critical difference – is done by someone independent and outside of the routine financial processes and financial staff. The auditor has a “fresh set of eyes” and will pick up things the internal folks may have missed; ask questions about things that are unclear; and if necessary, the auditor is far more likely to report errors, wrongdoing, bad assumptions and more.

When so much money is at stake; so many students and so many jobs – to not have duplicate and triple-checks is totally irresponsible. I don’t know for a fact that BPS didn’t have such systems, but like I said, if there was an “honest error” it should have gotten picked-up in some routine review or reconciliation.

Instead it sounds like either the shortfall or error was missed for far too long; OR was known but covered-up until now.

BPS and the Mayor’s office have been so non-transparent that at this point that we don’t even know for a fact which fiscal year the shortfall is in. FY2023 is the year that ended June 30. “This coming school year” is FY2024, yet the Mayor/School Committee statement to the media last night said FY2023. So which is it?