This week the Tucson unified School District Governing Board voted to give staff pay raise even though earlier this year, the Board was told by then Deputy Superintendent Yousef Awwad, that the District was facing a deficit.
However, due to the miraculous accounting efforts of Carla Soto, under the supervision of Superintendent H. T. Sanchez, almost immediately after Awwad’s departure, the administration announced it had plenty of money.
Sanchez claimed at the time of the pay raise vote that the money was coming from a surplus they enjoyed as a result of good fiscal management. TUSD Board member Dr. Mark Stegeman, an Economics professor at the University of Arizona, says otherwise. Stegeman claims that the District is now dipping into reserves.
South of Tucson, in the Nogales Unified School District, creative accounting is catching up with its governing board.
According to the Nogales International, the district “has made about $230,000 in payments to Uncle Sam since 2009 to resolve an IRS problem, yet the district’s governing board apparently knew nothing about it until a $32,000 penalty “reared its ugly head” during a meeting last month.”
The district’s Superintendent Steve Zimmerman told the Nogales International that he thought the issue was resolved years ago. Zimmerman told the Nogales International that he and former Finance Director Karla Soto “were right in the thick of cleaning that over the last few years and it’s reared its ugly head.”
Hector Arana, who has been a board member for 16 years, told the Nogales International, “Never was I aware we had a problem with the IRS. It’s the first I’ve ever heard of it and it seems to be seven years old. That’s extremely disturbing.”
Zimmerman reportedly told the board in a memo that “Since Nov. 20, 2009, five payments totaling $230,000 have been made to the IRS to settle the account. Documentation for 2004 is scarce and incomplete.” Nobody could recall this issue being discussed during public budget-preparation meetings.
“His memo said Soto did not make him aware of the problem of “past delinquencies” until this year, before she moved to take a job as chief financial officer for Tucson Unified School District,” reported the Nogales International.
The Nogales International claims it tried to reach Soto at her TUSD office but they were not successful.
According to sources, TUSD’s administration’s creative accounting will catch-up to it. Now, the District is simply moving money through journal entries to accommodate whatever whim Sanchez and Board president Adelita Grijalva have at any given moment.
Sources report that the pay increase is payback for the teachers union’s effort to get Grijalva re-elected to her fourth term on the Board.