4/24/08

Columbus Dispatch

Bill Bush

Last year, state auditors found that the Columbus schools hadn’t spent $3.4 million in federal Title I money for poor children. In this year’s audit, district schools had a different problem: spending too much.

The state audit released Tuesday showed that 52 schools spent a total of $735,000 more than they were entitled to under the weighted per-student formula devised by the federal government. In all, the district spent $32.8 million in 2006-07 through the Title I program, which is intended to pump more education money into schools with the highest percentages of poor kids.

The good news: Each school spent at least what it was supposed to, ending a string of audits that fostered complaints that the district was not doing enough to help poor kids succeed.

The bad news: Schools that overspent threw off the weighted formula, so the poorest schools didn’t necessarily get the most money. Varying salaries and benefits of employees caused the problem in this year’s audit, said Jeff Warner, spokesman for the district.

The district estimates that it will spend $60,000 per employee on salaries and benefits, he said. When the actual figure is higher — because teachers have either enough experience or education to be higher on the salary schedule — schools go over their budgets, he said.

“We’ve been more aggressive trying to see that the services that were planned were performed,” Warner said. “The bulk of the question is labor.”

The district also has been more aggressive in making sure schools aren’t underspending, said Treasurer Michael Kinneer. A district administrator now contacts principals when monthly monitoring reports show that their schools are not using all of their Title I money, Kinneer said.

Before last school year, state audits noted that district schools had underspent Title I money for at least three years. Last year, education consultant Phyllis McClure said the trend raised questions about whether district officials were doing enough to help underperforming schools.

McClure could not be reached yesterday.

The worst overspender for 2006-07 on a percentage basis was Colerain-Dominion Elementary School, which spent 125 percent of its $34,113 Title I budget. The worst overspender in terms of dollars was Heyl Elementary, which spent $53,621 more than its $302,661 Title I budget, according to the audit.

Under a solution worked out with the federal Department of Education, the district will pay any excesses at the building level out of a districtwide Title I fund, Warner said.

“We’ve fixed what (the) auditor identified,” he said.

A U.S. Department of Education spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.