The movie "Bad Education" just received two Emmy nominations the other day.
Bad Education is a movie about the true story of the misuse of taxpayer dollars and the deception by some of the administrators in a Long Island school district in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. The movie may remind you a lot about what happened in the Fox C-6 School District in 2013-2014 and the misuse of credit cards by some of our former school district administrators.
I’ve watched Bad Education a few times already since it first premiered on HBO a few months ago. It’s an excellent movie. It reminds me of so many things that was going on in our school district during Dianne Brown-Critchlow’s tenure as superintendent that I was documenting on my FoxC6Watchdogs blog back then.
Of course, I was looking into several things going on in our school district at the time like the over the top salary being paid to our superintendent, the comments be posted about me online for asking questions at board meetings as well as the ongoing 504 issues in our school district.
No Audio or Video Recordings of School Board Meetings
And, since Fox wasn't audio or video recording school board meetings back then, the public was pretty much kept in the dark about what I was asking our school board and our administrators. School board meeting minutes didn't provide any details as to what I was asking during public comments.
I would bet that if any of Fox’s former school board members watched the movie Bad Education, that it would bring back quite a few memories for them as well. It was at the February 2014 school board meeting when I asked our Fox school board members during public comments how they could approve bill payments without good descriptions of bill payments and without being provided copies of the credit card statements.
Great Scene About Personal Purchases Brings Back Memories
There’s one scene in the movie when the superintendent, played by Hugh Jackman, tells the school board members about the amount of taxpayer money that the auditor found that was spent on personal purchases by the school district’s business manager. That scene makes me wonder if our school board members felt the same way when they started looking at the credit card statements that were received in bulk by fax after I made a Sunshine Request for copies of them in April 2014.
Shredding Documents
I’m guessing that the district credit card statements may have been part of the documents that were shredded by Mark McCutchen, Fox’s former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) during Dianne's tenure as superintendent. Mr. McCutchen abruptly left the district after I made a Sunshine Request for copies of the credit card statements. Mr. McCutchen didn’t respond to the auditor’s questions during the state audit. His input to the audit should have been crucial to the state audit.
Grandview School District Patrons Can Relate
The parents and patrons in the Grandview School District can probably relate to the movie as well.
Some of the administrators in the movie Bad Education and the business manager at Grandview were prosecuted for their improper use of taxpayer dollars.
No one was prosecuted at Fox related to the findings of the state auditor's report that I'm aware of.
U.S. Attorney Told Me They "Didn't Find Any Criminal Intent"
The U.S. Attorney’s office told me in November 2017 that their office “didn’t find any criminal intent” when they reviewed the state auditor’s report, the FBI report and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office report due to the fact that our school board had approved all of the bill payments even though Fox's board members weren’t provided copies of the credit card statements. It was suggested by the U.S. Attorney's office that our school board needed to improve its approval processes.
Freedom of Information Act Request for FBI Report
I've made a couple of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the FBI for a copy of the FBI Report related to the state audit. I have a copy of the Jefferson County Sheriff's report and a copy of the state audit.
My first FOIA request response from the FBI informed me that the FBI was unable to identify any main file records responsive to my request related to Dianne Critchlow or the Fox C-6 School District. My second request was made with the actual FBI report number (46H-SL-7854210) provided to me by Jefferson County Sheriff Dave Marshak.
The FBI's response to my second FOIA request informed me that it may take up to 1500 days to respond to my request.
Is that what people refer to as sweeping things under the rug?
It shows what can go wrong when school board members and outside auditors don't do a very good job of oversight of a school district.
If you don't have HBO, you can always sign up for a Free 7 Day Trial just to watch the movie.
