Earlier in the week, the Chronicle reported that HISD spent up to as much as $100,000 dollars of vending-machine revenues so that some favored educators could attend Houston LiveStock Show and Rodeo gala events:
The Texas Education Agency is investigating whether some HISD principals and administrators wrongly tapped discretionary funds to spend as much as $100,000 on rodeo gala tickets since 2003.
The principals bought the tickets with profits from school vending machines that go into funds controlled by the school leaders, said George Garver, manager of campus audits in the Houston school district’s inspector general’s office. Tickets for the annual Black Heritage Western Gala were then given to teachers and administrators.
The discretionary funds are to be used to “promote the general welfare and the educational development and morale of students,” the HISD’s financial procedures manual says. “Any expenditures directly from this account must benefit the entire student body.”
School Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said principals and administrators had appropriately used the funds because purchasing tickets works to cement a fruitful partnership between HISD and the rodeo. The rodeo, he said, awards more than $1 million in college scholarships to HISD students annually.
“I have been reassured by the (HISD) inspector general that there is nothing illegal or unethical about this practice,” he said. “It’s a relatively small investment when you consider that the return on that is very substantial.”
Those bolded sentences really are astounding in light of the stated spending requirements for the vending machine funds, no?
The thoughts of one activist resonated with me (and probably quite a few others):
Del Murphy, husband of a retired HISD assistant principal, filed complaints with HISD’s inspector general and TEA. Money from the discretionary funds, he said, should go to buy school library books or make other school improvements.
“They use this money to go wining and dining. Taking this money and using it in this way is immoral,” he said. “You are taking money away from kids and elementary schools that are at minimal resources.”
Surely there was a better use for these funds.
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