Must Watch! HBO's "Bad Education" Movie Receives Two Emmy Nominations

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?

Bad Education is a great movie!

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.

https://www.hbo.com/movies/bad-education

If you don't have HBO, you can always sign up for a Free 7 Day Trial just to watch the movie.

The Fox C-6 School Board Election Is Only One Week Away!

The Fox C-6 school board election is only one week away!

Have you read the voters guide for this year's Fox C-6 School Board candidates?

I recommend reading some of the past voters guide articles as well.

I've posted a link to the voters guides below from the Leader Publications website.

Reading through the past voters guides is quite interesting. Not everyone is aware of who board candidates are related to in the school district. Then there's always the connections as to who was helping who get elected such as who their campaign treasurer was during an election. That's another important point to note as well. You won't find campaign treasurers listed in the voters guide. But, it's good information to know.

Board candidates give reasons as to why they should be elected in the voters guides. You can read about some of our previous and current board members as to why they say they should be elected. Compare the reasons they listed with what was allowed to occur. Oversight and accountability is something that's really needed in our school district and has been sorely lacking for more than a decade.

What oversight was there when the credit card misuse and salary over payments were discovered during former superintendent Dianne (Critchlow) Salsman's time as superintendent?

Were any of our current or former school board members interviewed by the FBI during their investigation of the school district?

Dr. Wipke didn't mention that any of our school board members were interviewed by the FBI in the January 26, 2017 Arnold-Imperial Leader news article nor was there any mention of it by Leader writer, Kim Robertson.

Dr. Wipke stated in the January 26, 2017 Leader that:

"The FBI talked to employees, and the auditor did a full audit, and all our employees had an obligation to answer their questions to the fullest of their knowledge and turn over any documents and information they had. It’s been a time-staking process to go through all these investigations. I know it’s something that was desperately needed to be done, and all of our employees fully cooperated with any entity asking questions.”

If school board members had been interviewed by the FBI, they would have been able to speak about the numerous requests I made to our school board over the years for the district to post bill payments and budget documents on the district website for the public to review. They would have also been able speak about my numerous requests I made to review credit card statements in 2014 after the district had paid out nearly $2 million in credit card payments.

Our school board needs to get a copy of the FBI report for the public to review. We've only been able to get a copy of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office investigation report so far. That's the report that Fox's former school board secretary Debby Davis said that she wasn't going to throw Dianne under the bus.

The FBI report should also be able to explain why the U.S. Attorney's office and St. Charles Prosecuting Attorney Tim Lohmar didn't file criminal charges in the case despite what was uncovered and documented in the 2016 State Auditor's report.

It's certainly odd that charges weren't filed in Fox's case when others are routinely charged for the same type of misuse of public funds in other school districts and public entities.

Four of Fox's current school board members were on the board when online defamatory posts were traced back to our former superintendent's home and when the credit card misuse was discovered in 2014. However, they still agreed to pay out $130,000 to our former superintendent when she "retired" from the district. Why?

School board elections can greatly affect whether or not people will be held accountable for their actions. A great deal of that depends on who the candidates are friends with or who they have worked with in the past.

Below are links to some of the past Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guides:

2018 Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guide

https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/fox-c--school-district-crowded-field-seeking-pair-of/article_79e7d016-2d37-11e8-8445-5f6b2d04c71c.html

2017 Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guide
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/elections/fox-c--schools----at-least-one/article_0853e54c-10ce-11e7-af5a-3721123fbf27.html

2016 Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guide
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/elections/fox-c--schools-all-four-candidates-say-district-is/article_73e33700-f5d0-11e5-983f-cfac20f8507d.html

2015 Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guide
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/elections/fox-c--school-district-six-candidates-line-up-for/article_868dca38-d3f7-11e4-82eb-17747b9f37a7.html

2014 Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guide
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/elections/five-vie-for-three-seats-on-fox-c--school/article_76d657c2-bc38-11e3-aefa-0017a43b2370.html

2013 Fox C-6 School Board Candidate Voters Guide
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/elections/fox-school-district/article_92b035c8-031b-5eed-b32e-af8715f37e03.html

JUNE 20, 2017 - Vern Sullivan Rejoins Fox School Board
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/familiar-face-rejoins-fox-board-of-education/article_99632784-55eb-11e7-afd1-5f555d421750.html

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Law Enforcement Records - Tim Crutchley Interview

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Law Enforcement Records Management System software tracks individual Narratives for interviews or evidence gathering conducted by the Sheriff's Office for an Incident Report. The Incident Report is assigned a Case Number.

The Case Number for the Critchlow Case is: 201619044. There were 14 Narratives in the Incident Report provided to me.

The first Incident Narrative in the Incident Report was an interview with Tim Crutchley who took over as "Interim Superintendent" of Fox C-6 after the departure of former superintendent Dianne Critchlow.

In Tim Crutchley's interview he mentions Dianne Critchlow, Jamie Critchlow, Pete Nicholas, Deborah Davis and Mark McCutchen.

One of the most notable narratives documented in the report from Tim Crutchley was :

"Tim advised cash from entry fees at school football games was taken home by Dianne, which was never counted or logged in any way."

I also found it interesting that Mr. Crutchley mentioned the 2012 Bond Issue money during his interview and the difference between what was budgeted and what was requested. I wrote about this issue back in July 2012.

It's one of the reasons I was sent a Cease and Desist letter from Dianne Critchlow:

https://foxc6watchdogs.blogspot.com/2012/07/why-you-should-vote-no-on-fox-c-6s-185.html

Documents Redacted by the Sheriff's Office

The documents I received from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office are public records and were redacted by the Sheriff's Office to obscure Social Security Numbers, Date of Birth and Phone Numbers. It's important for the Fox C-6 community to see what was reviewed by the various prosecuting attorneys since no charges were filed in this case. I believe that most people in the Fox C-6 community and even outside the community find it difficult to understand and digest just what was collected by the Sheriff's Office collected and recorded into the Incident Reports. I wasn't provided copies of additional documents that were collected by JCSO.

Examples of some of the documents collected:

• Closed Session school board meeting minutes
• emails
• copies of employment contracts
• tax records from Dianne Critchlow's personnel file
• hard drives from the school district.

I'm curious as to why interviews weren't conducted with Dianne Critchlow, Jamie Critchlow or Mark McCutchen. Their names were listed in the Persons segment of the Incident Report but there weren't any Narratives documented for them.

Need A Copy of the FBI Report

It's important that community obtains a copy of the FBI's Report which was reviewed by the prosecuting attorneys in order to get a more complete picture of what was uncovered.

Below is a link to a copy of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Incident Narrative Report of Tim Crutchley's interview in PDF format.

Tim Crutchley's Interview with Jefferson County Sheriff's Office

I used PDF-XChange Editor software by Tracker Software Products to perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on the scanned PDF document that was emailed to me from the Sheriff's Office. Performing an OCR scan of the document makes the document text searchable. Otherwise, the Incident Reports are as I received them from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.