After asking the Fox C-6 district to publish the district budget online for the last several years, they finally did it. Of course, no one from the school board or the District responded to my questions asking for these items to let me know they were posted online. I even asked about this at the February and March school board meetings and in my last several emails. Needless to say, I haven't been impressed with the professionalism of our Superintendent considering the amount of money that she is being paid.
The budget and annual audit report weren't on the district website last month when I downloaded the monthly board meeting packet. I just found them the other day when I went to download the April 15 school board meeting packet.
I've been asking our school board to publish the school district's budget on the district website during many of my Public Comments over the years. On occasion, I've been given excuses from Superintendent Critchlow as to why these documents couldn't be posted online.
Here are some of the reasons:
- At the February 2014 board meeting, Superintendent Critchlow told me that I was the only one asking for the data. That's not a good reason for not publishing the data on the District's website.
- She also told me several years ago that the district's financial data is on the Missouri DESE website. Of course, there's only summary data on DESE"s website; there are no details.
- She also told me that the district doesn't have a full time person to maintain our website like they do in other districts. She said that Fox would rather put its money into the classroom.
If your school district is going to be transparent, then this information needs to be made available to to the general public and not just provided to just those requesting the data.
You can now visit the district's website and download the 2013-2014 District Budget and the 2012-2013 Audit Report produced by Daniel Jones & Associates. The annual audit from the Jones & Associates is nothing like having a state audit where they really dig into the data and look for problems as I've documented in recent Twitter posts. Fox hasn't had a state audit since 2000 or 2001. It's definitely time that Fox has another state audit which must be requested through a petition.
Visit the Fox C-6 Board of Education Documents Page to download the documents:
http://www.fox.k12.mo.us/board_of_education/board_of_education_documents/