Weslaco ISD School Board: Board Workshop 9/20/21

good evening i am dr jaime rodriguez vice president of the west sequoia isd board of trustees this board workshop is being conducted in compliance with the texas open meetings act notice of this meeting has been posted online for at least 72 hours the board is meeting by by the use of google meets and telephone transmission which allows two-way communication for members of the public during public comments a recording of this meeting is being made and will be available to the public at a later date the time is now 5 32 p.m and i call this meeting to order i will now begin the roll call let the and uh we'll start with uh mrs jackie's joseph president coach jesse delevingno president martin los santos president and let the record show that a quorum of board members are in attendance a quorum is not required for board workshops and we will go on to item three of the comments there are none and now we'll go on to item four presentation by weaver and tidwell llp on final forensic audit report dr bardes vice president dr rodriguez trustees and members of the audience travis kassner and his team from weaver and tidwell are joining us remotely to share their presentation of the wisd forensic audit finals final reports as requested by the board of trustees mr kastner if you're ready you may proceed thank you and uh and jared jordan who's the the partner in charge for weaver's forensics and litigation services practices on as well so he's also going to be uh presenting with me this evening but i'm going to start by sharing my screen and get that set up and then we'll get started uh uh all right thank you thank you travis i can i can see the slides now can everyone else yeah you're not seeing the one with the notes right it's the full slide right now no you it does show the next slide and it okay on the right side chart again that's it it's good so right now it's showing the full slide correct okay uh good evening thank you very much for allowing us to present the findings of our investigative efforts on this matter i just wanted to take a couple of minutes at the outset and refresh everyone's memory about weaver and our experience with isds and the approach we took on this engagement weber is the 35th largest accounting firm in the country we have 12 locations across the united states with eight of those being in texas uh san antonio austin dallas houston and fort worth among some other uh offices in smaller cities we've got 800 plus employees and over a hundred partners and in one of our core areas of focus is government related work both financial statement audit internal control assessments as well as forensic investigations such as this also wanted to take just a moment to highlight our experience serving school districts across texas we have worked on on a number of different types of engagements ranging from traditional financial statement audits to forensic investigations such as this as well as other risk advisory services this is a list of the different types or there are different school districts and other organizations that we have provided services for over the years and again this is just a sample sample list of those so i wanted to take a minute and just talk about our approach that we took on on this investigation it's it's an approach that we follow on just about any investigation that we perform whether it's for another school district or a city or municipality or for a privately held company or a large publicly traded one typically our phase one includes a planning and scoping exercise often that involves discussions with key stakeholders as well as performing some preliminary analyses that we'll talk about a little bit earlier to identify areas for further investigation and analysis phase two of our efforts typically involve a dive or an additional investigation of the areas that have been identified during phase one as well as other areas that arise either that we believe should be investigated or key stakeholders ask us to expand our scope into during the course of the investigation the last phase of our work and these types of matters is the document documentation and reporting phase that can take many different forms in this case we've submitted two reports as well as the presentation uh this evening in just a again to refresh everyone's memory uh the background about how this project came about was that weaver submitted uh our statement of qualifications in response to the district's uh rfq that was produced i believe it was on january 6 2021 is when we submitted our statement of qualifications we were subsequently selected and then retained by the board in early february and during that board meeting we also conducted a board workshop and meeting with board members to discuss and establish the scope of our services in this matter as well as to identify the potential areas for us to review during the course of our investigation and uh and i'm going to talk about the scope of work next and then get into the summary of our observations and findings and just as as jared mentioned earlier you know we've uh submitted uh you know two reports and uh you know that really includes the the detail of our findings and this presentation is intended to be uh a summary of of the work that we did in those findings and observations and uh you know the exhibits and the appendices that support the report also uh provide a lot of the detail of how we uh you know arrived at our conclusions and ultimate findings as well as recommendations um so this is you know summarizing um the the contents of those two reports and um and one other thing i do want to mention is that the reason that there were there's two reports is that uh for timing purposes uh you know we were asked by the board to uh you know have certain uh you know scopes of work uh presented first so that there was time for decisions to be made and uh you know it to the extent they needed to be related to the school year um starting in august and so it's it's really all part of this same engagement and scope of work but we did have uh two reports for uh logistical purposes and uh to really go into the the scope of work as jared mentioned um we met with the board uh in february of 2021 and had the initial discussions about about the scope of work and and it's consistent with what we typically do for these types of investigations where uh you know phase one is really understanding the issues having the conversations and discussions with the key stakeholders which in this case is the board and understanding the areas uh you know where investigation is required uh you know with uh many of these there's uh you know cost considerations and we can't investigate uh you know every single aspect of the district's operations and so it's a combination of understanding what the priorities are what concerns have been raised what issues are already uh known or are uh have been made aware to the stakeholders and and then also um you know our approach than to do some analytics and look at a lot of the you know broad transactions um and identify any additional areas of further review or where there's potential red flags but really the goal is from a financial standpoint is to identify any potential fraud ways to abuse and so that being said the the scope of work that we finalized you know through working with the board was to review the financial expenditures for the district going back to fiscal year 2015 uh to identify any potential fraud waste abuse and so that's approximately a billion dollars worth of expenditures for both salary payroll as well as payments of vendors contractors and third parties and uh one one component of that is the construction uh the spending on construction projects through a combination of bond and tax notes as well as local funds from the general fund our scope also included a benchmarking analysis where we compared the district's expenditures compared to the other comparable school districts in texas and uh specifically we'll talk more uh detail about this in a little bit uh school districts with over 10 000 students enrolled which was about 112 school districts we also conducted a review of payments of vendors consultants contractors as well as other third parties that were paid by the district and the objective was to identify any potential conflicts of interest uh and or any potential improper payments and then we also looked at a certain assets over a certain dollar threshold which we uh determined to be five thousand dollars and again uh you know i think we decided it was not cost effective to you know do an inventory of every asset over 5000 but we were uh you know narrowed our scope to uh identify the priority items uh for what that review included we also conducted a review of the district's processes and procedures and this was you know one component of this related to purchasing and procurement including purchase orders requisitions the competitive bidding process vendor management we also were one of the priorities for the board was to look at the district's hiring practices including uh the internal or lateral transfers we were also asked to look at the compensation plan as far as pay scales and the annual pay increases included the practice for you know making those those changes each year and the methodology et cetera we also looked at the district's job descriptions and both the current job descriptions as well as the archive of job descriptions to review the revisions for each position going back five years we looked at the district's policies and procedures both with respect to local and legal as well as uh kind of the employee handbook and um you know procedure manuals that were available and then finally we were asked to look at the district's organizational structure uh to determine if uh you know if the alignment was you know appropriate for the district's strategy so during the investigation there was a large volume of information that we reviewed including electronic and hard copy documents as well as you know through the course of interviews that we conducted but we looked at for fiscal years 2015 through 2020 we looked at the board meeting minutes the agenda packets which were um primarily located through the email these are the the detail uh for each of the uh agenda items that has the provided to the board with kind of the detail for um in addition to what's on the uh district's website as well as meeting videos kind of where applicable for uh where we needed to um you know actually watch the videos of certain uh meetings we analyze over 2.3 million email records related to 27 current former district employees we also looked at purchasing records from the district's audio scan a database including invoices purchase orders requisitions you can have all the supporting documentation that is maintained by the district for each vendor that is scanning to the audio system we conducted witness interviews with over 30 current and former district employees as well as board members in third parties and we also analyzed the various district financial reports uh including the check register the audited financial statements and the the pms data that's submitted to the tea and i also want to point out too that uh you know these are some of the the information and data that we reviewed and some of the work steps performed um but there were you know additional work steps that were done that um formed the basis of our observations and findings and recommendations and those are discussed in more detail throughout the two reports that we submitted so now i'm going to start uh this gets into the the observations and findings and i'm going to start with the report uh number two uh that we submitted into sequentially uh this is the uh more of the financial related items and um i'm really just going to go in order of the executive summary where first we're looking at the benchmarking analysis that we did for the fiscal years 2015 through 2019. uh to give a little bit of information about the methodology as i mentioned we looked at fiscal years 2015 through 2019 and looked at the 112 school districts in texas with over 10 000 students and the the approach that we took and that we typically take with these types of investigations is to kind of look at the cost categories on a granular level and so what i mean by that is if you're looking at you know the financial statements and the broad cost categories such as um you know professional services or you know instruction you know it's they're too broad if the objective is to identify potential fraud waste and abuse and so what uh we typically do is uh get the cost you know narrow the cost categories to where we can identify anomalies and potential red flags and so uh you know to that end what we typically do is create a matrix with the function and object codes uh kind of where those two uh codes define the cost category and so for example we can you know focus in on um this is just an example the function code 34 which relates to student transportation and then object code 6249 which is contracted maintenance repairs and so identifying all of the transactions for the district that are coded to those two codes and and then comparing to other school districts and also you know normalizing on a per student basis and so that allows us to kind of do an apples to apples uh comparison of the district to 112 other school districts and identify areas where you know spending is higher or lower or you know very comparable to to the other school districts and the goal of doing this is to identify some of the higher risk cost categories where there may be potential fraud waste and abuse or where maybe it's more likely and so this would include as i mentioned cost categories where the spending may exceed comparable school districts one of the common uh metrics we use is the top five or top ten percent so there's 112 comparable school districts and the districts ranked you know fifth or sixth out of 112 that would be one where uh you know we might want to look further about what are the costs you know where the payments going to for that cost category and then cost categories where there's discretionary spending and so by discretionary spending i mean uh some of the ones where it's you know payments to vendors or you know miscellaneous uh operating costs you know less so the salaries and the uh you know the payroll related but more of you know the ones where it's uh you know a little bit less clear about what's where the funds are being used based on the name and the code of the cost category and so these are some examples of some of the cost categories that we identified from our review as being higher risk of potential fraud wasted abuse from the benchmarking analysis we did one of the appendices in our report has the you know complete uh analysis but this was uh kind of for summarizing these are some of the ones that we highlighted in the executive summary um and what you'll see is most of these are you know where the cost categories were the districts ranked in the top ten so if we're looking at the first one uh professional services related to curriculum and adaptive development and that was uh one where the district ranked 8th out of 81 and uh the reason it's 8 out of 81 we're still comparing to the 112 other school districts but not all of the school districts use every cost code and so in this case this would be you know i guess indicative 29 um or 31 i guess school districts didn't report for that cost code but we're still comparing to the same uh you know 112 other school districts and so what you'll see is a lot of these are ones where kind of based on the district's spending levels compared to other school districts as well as our you know experience conducting these types of investigations and the types of cost categories where we do find uh there's higher risk of fraud wasted abuse you know examples being contracted maintenance or miscellaneous operating costs or miscellaneous contract services these were some of the cost categories that we identified from the benchmarking that were you know for further review and switching next to awards and incentives uh this was uh a cost category that uh that we conducted further investigation of and actually just back up real quick so the the awards and incentives the the code utilized by the district is six four nine seven for the tea and the team's data recording uh it it gets converted to six four nine nine so you you can see that uh there were two uh different categories that had miscellaneous operating costs for object code 6499 so this was one that was uh where the district's expenditures were higher it was also one where uh you know there were board members who had received concerns or had concerns about uh spending regarding awards and incentives and so this was an area that we uh you know conducted further investigation and looked at some of the payments to vendors within this cost category and what we found from our review for looking at the district's check register for object code 6497 which is what defines the awards and incentives is that from fiscal years 2015 through 2020 the district's expenditures were 4.9 million for awards and incentives we also compared the budgeted amounts to the actual amounts for awards and incentives and uh this chart below uh shows that uh in most years um in fact in in every year from fiscal years 15 through 20. the actual expenditures um you know exceeded the budget amounts in the total being about 1.6 million but in most years it was about a 40 to 60 percent um you know uh i guess over the budget um and so that was one observation that we that we had uh as far as the procurement process we determined that the district awarded what's called multiple award contracts where they selected they did a request for proposals and approved several vendors based on the evaluations of the proposals by both campus principals and members of the purchasing department the vendor that was paid the most from this cost category was embroidery express they were paid 2.2 million out of that 4.9 million so about 46 percent of rewards incentives in 2017 the board you know started to require that for purchases over three thousand dollars that uh for awards and incentives that there must be um at least three quotes um obtained from the approved uh vendors uh in our review we you know went into the alio scan database and for all of the awards and incentives purchases uh to see if there were you know quotes that were obtained and so we determined that for a 627 629 of this uh 4.9 million that the uh there were uh purchases that exceeded the three thousand dollar threshold but we did not see evidence that multiple quotes were obtained in the procurement process uh so we investigated that further to determine you know um you know why if there was some other factors going on so there was a couple of things that we identified one a lot of the 627 000 related to holiday incentive funds and our understanding is that these are funds that are budgeted um usually in november uh in in transferred into the campus budgets for uh to use for these holiday incentive purchases and uh given the short time window from november until the start of the holiday break that the uh what's what's typically happened based on the documents we reviewed in our discussions with individuals in the business office is that there's uh authorization to uh to to purchase you know even if it's over three thousand dollars without you know obtaining multiple quotes due to the timing constraints and so that was one of the larger you know accounted for a lot of the amounts where we didn't see multiple quotes uh shifting gears now to construction expenditures this was not another area uh that we were looking into and this was the largest cost category the exception of payroll that uh for the district during the period of our review the the district's construction expenditures during this period total 33.5 million uh the majority of which were paid from the district's construction fund uh so they were not paid from tax notes or uh there was also a energy conservation form with um uh was used for a energy savings project with a it's kind of a special qsad loan is what it's called but it's it's uh it is borrowed funds but most of the funds were uh that were used for construction were from the you know construction fund and uh my understanding is those are transferred over from from the general fund you know they're not uh you know bond funds per se and uh there were there were from what we reviewed uh for this 33.5 million most of that amount is uh related to 18 construction projects which were awarded to 12 contractors and so we reviewed the procurement method and the contractor selection process for those 18 projects we determined that all 18 of the projects used the competitive sealed proposal procurement method on average the district received five proposals per project based on the request for proposals that it that was solicited uh in all on 17 of the 18 projects the board delegated authority to administrative personnel to evaluate and rank proposals and then make a recommendation to the board typically the evaluation committees consisted of between five and seven uh members um typically these are members from the the business office purchasing um you know construction maintenance the you know relevant department in some cases the uh you know engineer or architect that's been hired for the project was also sits on those evaluation committees for 11 of the 17 where the evaluation committees were established the lowest cost bidder was recommended to the board and approved by the board for the six that uh the lowest cost bidder was not selected the second lowest cost bidder was selected instead and for uh all the the projects that we looked at there there were you know indicator explanations for why the first uh lowest bidder was not selected either uh they did not meet their criteria for the proposal uh in their submission or uh there was a parent you know differences in experience where the second lowest cost bidder was was more experienced and that was what the explanation was for why they were selected over the lowest cost uh our review of the district's expenditures we also one of the the cost categories where um we observed higher spending compared to the p to its peers as well as an area that you know there had been some concern was related to the maintenance and repair expenditures uh for student transportation so this was an area where we conducted further review an investigation and looked at the payments to vendors within this cost category the uh supporting invoices and purchasing documents and conducted interviews as needed so the summary of our findings related to our review of the maintenance and repair for for buses we we found that the district paid 61 vendors uh for a total of 1.3 million during fiscal years 2015 through 2020. the highest paid vendor uh was mid valley trailer which we're referring to as nvtr uh within this this cost category they were paid 686 123 which was over 50 of the the 1.3 million dollar total i think that the total payments to nvtr across all cost categories was around 900 000 for for this period we we looked at the procurement method for the bus repair and maintenance and we noted that the similar to the uh awards and incentives that the district utilized the uh you know the multiple award contract where they uh submitted or solicited uh proposals and and evaluated and selected uh in this case four four vendors um that were approved and had a threshold of three thousand dollars where uh starting in 2018 where uh if purchases exceeded three thousand dollars then uh multiple quotes were were uh required so we looked at for and this is just looking at the mvtr of after may of 2018 when the the board started requiring the three thousand dollar threshold for multiple quotes uh for the 22 nvtr purchase orders that uh did exceed that three thousand dollar threshold we noted that only two uh of the 22 uh there were multiple quotes and uh based on our discussions with uh you know individuals from transportation department you know what our understanding is is that the uh you know with especially with repairs and in when it's engine related and uh you know diagnostics are required as well as the you know disassembly reassembly and uh towing of of of the bus from one location to another to get multiple quotes it was um you know from what we were told it wasn't practical and timely and so that was the uh the explanation for you know why they didn't get multiple quotes for for these kind of repairs so this is a chart uh that shows on a quarterly basis the payments by the district to nvtr uh for bus repairs so what we observed was that uh around the middle of 2016 uh which um it was around the time that there was a new transportation director that there was a uh increase in the payments uh on a quarterly basis to mvtr so this i don't know if you can see it but there's the the dashed line here is kind of that uh kind of the june or july 2016 time period um we we did note that you know the there were payments to mvtr prior to the transition from the prior transportation director to the the new transportation new transportation director um but we did observe an increase in uh know repair payments for repairs and maintenance team based on our review of documents and email data as well as discussions with [Music] individuals from the transportation department and from the business office you know we determined that there were several occasions where the transportation director was questioned about the increase in payments to nvtr specifically by the transportation director supervisor and leadership within the business office [Music] the uh reasons that were provided uh in this these were provided to us but also to um you know in correspondence um you know with with those individuals of why the transportation director for using you know nvtr for the majority of the bus repairs those included one was convenience the vendor and vtr was located or is located across the street from the the bus depot um the uh they were faster as far as the turnaround time for completing repairs compared to some of the larger uh repair shops uh they also uh it was noted that their hourly rate was lower compared to the other um pre-approved ergos vendors that were part of the multiple award contract [Music] i noticed here on our report the names are there but on your on your uh presentation you did not put any names did you redecorate the names from all your from the powerpoint or your presentation i would i wouldn't call it a redaction i think what we typically do in these types of presentations when we're referring to um you know current employees is refer to the position i think that you know the report is uh you know i think that that remains unchanged and the names are included um you know i think is our general practice um you know unless it's unduly confusing as far as who we're referring to our you know typical practices to uh you know refer to the positions and the titles um versus names where we can okay thank you for that clarification um we also uh we also noted in our review that there was uh uh i guess one one event where the um the transportation director advocated for nvtr to receive contract related to the parts purchases in addition to the repair and maintenance even though nvtr not being a supplier was not able to uh you know did not in their proposal include a discount and so there was uh some back and forth about about the um including them in the recommendation for the award i think ultimately the the mvtr was not included in that contract award related to the parts and supplies uh during the course of our investigation we were provided information uh that an employee was offered football tickets from an nvtr representative we were also informed that it was common for the transportation director to go out to lunch with that same nvtr representative based on the documentation that we reviewed we noted that the form 1295 that was submitted by mbtr to the district which was also filed with the texas ethics commission it did not list the names of interested parties um and based on you know our understanding with the the rules um unless there's circumstances we're not aware of that's typically something that we would expect to see for um smaller non-public companies still still talking about the the maintenance repairs for the buses uh we noted that most of the vendor payments that were that went to mvtr related to repairs of the district's older bus fleet specifically the 2002 to 2006 model buses we noted that after the the flood that impacted the district in june of 2018 but the older buses were utilized as the spare buses and the uh all the buses that were within 10 years and still um you know had insurance coverage were uh were replaced and there were 63 new buses purchased that became the main fleet so all of the 2002 to 2006 buses which there were 21 of them became the the spare fleet uh starting in june of 2018 and from that time until the end of our review period we identified payments totaling 179 000 to nvtr that related to the those 21 spare buses that that i just referenced we conducted an on-site review of the entire bus fleet and specifically with respect to the spare buses we recorded the the mileage as of may 2021 we compared that mileage to the last recorded mileage of september uh 2018 so we we noted that in total the uh 21 spare buses had about 105 000 miles during that two and a half year period from september 2018. we noted there were five buses that had less than 300 miles i believe that three of those were special education buses um uh and you know all followed by the ones that had less than 300 miles also had you know over ten thousand dollars in uh repair costs through through mvtr so you know what what we did was uh for each each bus we took all of the invoices and identified which bus they were assigned to and analyzed the types of repairs for each bus and so in the in the report there's a a an appendix that details the analysis of the repair costs on a bus by bus basis we also looked at payments related to professional services for primarily this would be consulting type of services and uh this was another uh area where we identified that the the district's costs were uh for certain cost categories were higher than the uh the comparable school districts uh and this relates to object code 6219 for professional services but we identified uh total payments uh to 311 vendors uh i think the total was around 19 million uh and we uh kind of prioritized you know based on the types of payments you know there are some that are you know larger payments for benefits and those kinds of things so we kind of focused on uh you know certain uh types of vendors within this group that um where we conducted further review so one of those was the payments for special education consulting services so we reviewed five of five vendors that are shown in this table that were special education consultants within the professional services object code we noted that the total payments which were a little over 1.4 million that 29 of those that there was not uh purchase orders and it was kind of spread it was it was really across all all five of uh of those there was about 417 000 where we did not uh identify purchase orders within the lio scan database uh we also another uh area that we looked at within professional services relates to the uh ambulance services we reviewed payments to south point ems which totaled eight 191 five uh we noted based on our review of the board minutes and the the documents within alias scan for this vendor that the uh the vendor had previously uh was was guardian ems and that there was a buyout that happened in 2015 or 2016 time period where uh the all of the contracts that were assigned to guardian were transferred over to to southpointe ems and we identified uh a campaign contribution from the owner of southpointe ems that was made to the district's former athletic director in the amount of hundred dollars the uh and that was related to a uh uh campaign for uh a board sneak with the uh with a another school district uh we also determined that approximately 90 of the district's payments to southport ems did not have a purchase order uh we did note though that the the board there was uh you know clear uh authorization from the board within the board minutes that indicated that the board held uh you know approved the uh purchases for this vendor related to the ambulance services which were typically uh 400 per game primarily football but other athletic events as well another area that we that we looked at within the district's expenditures was to identify any what we refer to as affiliated vendors and what what what this means when we say affiliated vendors is we're really we're trying to identify any vendors that are either directly or indirectly affiliated with uh either current or former board members as well as any district employees and so to do that we compared information from the vendor master file um with respect for you know for the uh you know i think there's close to 6 000 vendors which lists all of their address phone number type of information and cross-reference that to the but the employee roster for each of the five years that we reviewed as well as for board members and close family members of the current and former board members to identify if there's any any matches as far as phone number or address and those are what we refer to as i guess potentially affiliated vendors because you know i think there there are instances where there are other explanations for why phone numbers match or you know obviously people move or change phone numbers and so uh you know the first step is to kind of do the cross-reference and identify those matches and then uh to conduct further review uh and what we're looking for uh the objective of this type of analysis is to identify if there are any conflicts of interest or improper payments and so through doing the analysis that i just described with the vendor master file and the employee and board information we identified 37 potentially affiliated vendors however only six of the 37 uh of those vendors received payments from the districts within the the period of our review so uh you know the vendor master file you know it's uh you know there's vendors that may have been paid you know within you know several years or more prior to the period of our review or were set up and never received payment we didn't you know analyze the ones that did not receive payments within the 2015 to 2020 time period but we did do further review of the of the six and uh and to determine you know uh whether there was any improper payments um we did there was one that we identified where it did look like the phone number matched but it was uh it was not a true affiliated vendor and that one is is documented in the report but what we found was that of these six uh we did not identify that there were any evidence of improper payments or any conflict of interest and the this is the last uh category within the the review of the district's um expenditures uh we looked uh across the entire uh check register uh at the uh payments to vendors with respect to purchase orders so we uh we were looking at payments to about 5700 vendors the total for the period of our review is 260 million so what based on the information that is in the check register we identified payments totaling 58.4 million which equals 22.4 where there was not a purchase order associated with the the payment and these payments primarily included uh you know larger payments for employee benefits uh insurance utilities legal services were some of the the main uh categories and uh we did have discussions with the business office and you know the the uh based on the information that we received you know there were several reasons why purchase orders you know may not have been uh you know issued for these payments you know one being the size of the of the payments would have automatically triggered the um you know would have gone through the the district's approval processes were you know larger payments there was clear authorization by the board that the uh these vendors were were approved for these services um and so it did not you know generally speaking it did not appear that that the lack of a purchase order was was necessarily a attempt to circumvent the districts uh purchasing you know the internal controls um an approval process that uh is triggered with a purchase order uh we we also identified payments that uh where the board authorized emergency purchases and specifically as it relates to the 2018 time period after the flooding there was a period where you know the for repair and maintenance of vehicles and facilities uh and and to do so in a timely fashion that the uh emergency purchases meaning no the uh department did not have to uh you know obtain purchase orders uh in order to expedite the purchasing process so that was another another factor that we uh identified related to our analysis of purchase orders um and you know it might be that we're kind of in the uh a little over the halfway mark and then we're switching now to um you know the other report does it make sense to stop and see if anybody has any questions now um i can't see the room but uh i can keep going or if if you want to stop for questions you know just let me know what makes sense do you want to just continue we'll say the discussion for for the end okay we have a we have an item for discussion after the presentation travis so we'll go ahead and keep going with the presentation um and so as i mentioned earlier we we had uh you know split up the the scope of work uh to be the review of the district's uh you know expenditures and then and then also the review of the practices procedures and and the majority of which relates to the human resources function within the district and so we're talking now about you know some of our observations and findings with respect to uh to that review and and uh you know this is where you know a lot of the uh financial review you know our analysis is based on you know documents from alias scan where we have the you know invoices and purchase orders as well as the uh check register and the vendor master file and and uh a lot of those types of records the this uh our investigation here was was uh primarily based on uh the review of email data as well as uh you know interviews we uh were on site in i believe it was in may uh and and spoke with um i think most if not all of the individuals within um the department and then we did speak with the uh the former hr director as well uh to summarize our findings first as it relates to uh hiring practices this was an area uh that we were asked to look at um uh you know first in relation to the the position of uh hr administrator slash hr director um and then this is some of this is kind of for the the background but in january of 2014 uh based on our review of the the board minutes and the agenda items within the email data we determined that the board tabled a motion to approve a candidate that was recommended for the hr administrator position uh and instead of approving that candidate um there were about 10 months later in november 2014 the there was a different candidate that was um well let me back up the the board tabled the motion for the hr administrator position in january of 2014 and then there was a new uh hiring process and job posting and in round of interviews so it's a um a different uh you know round of interviews here but the uh the it was a different candidate that was through by the board uh than the one that was recommended in january 2014 we noted that the candidate that was approved by the board in november 2014 for hr administrator had less qualifications and experience in most if not all of the candidates that were interviewed within uh 10 months or so of being hr administrator the individual was promoted to the position of hr director we noted that the hr administrator that was being promoted did not have a master's degree which was a requirement for that position we also noted that the 12 other candidates well 12 of the other candidates i believe there were a few others i think there was a total of 15 candidates 12 of the other candidates did have master's degrees and we we noted that uh as of uh that promotion to hr director uh that from uh september 2015 uh to november of 2014 within that 10-month period that the hr's hr director's salary had increased about 107 percent from 48 819 from the data analyst position to 101 278 for the hr director we also in our review of email data we noted that the hr administrator that was promoted to hr director emailed the interview questions or appear to email we haven't confirmed that these were the email questions that were actually asked we did speak with members of the interviewing committee and given that it was september 2015 six years ago we do not know for certain but what we do know is that the uh individual emailed questions uh to themselves the night before the interview for hr director that were appear to be you know the format of the interview questions for the hr director position we also noted that the hr director had been an active volunteer uh in past election campaigns for uh several board members uh within the district including one who was serving on the board when they were hired as hr administrator as well as when they were promoted to hr director during our review we also noted that both the son and the daughter of the hr administrator and hr director were hired by the district in august of 2015 so this would have been kind of right prior to the promotion from hr administrator to hr director uh the the the son was also uh in august of 2020 was transferred from a math teacher position at mary hogue middle school to a health teacher position at b garza and that we noted it was facilitated in part by the hr director just to provide a little bit more detail what we determined in a review of the email the the there was a music teacher uh that had resigned in uh august of 2020 um and uh rather than hiring a new music teacher i was determined that there they would convert that position into a health position and we spoke with the you know the campus principal who indicated that there it was the principal's decision to to make that conversion but what we did note was the in the email correspondence between the hr director and the assistant superintendent that uh you know there was discussion about referring the principal to the volunteer transfer list to fill the health position once it was converted and we we noted that the the voluntary transfer list included two individuals but only one of them had the pe certification which was the son of the hr director was the only one with that certification we also um reviewed uh either some uh uh hiring for a position related to an individual uh who was uh in a relationship with the daughter of the former hr director um that individual was hired by the district in 2017 as an ace site coordinator and based on our discussions with the former hr director the individual was not in a relationship with their daughter at that point in time um but we did note that uh the hr director had forwarded the job description uh to their daughter and who then forwarded it to the individual that applied for the position and was hired and was the only candidate without a master's degree which we also noted was not required for the position we identified at least two instances where uh individuals who were recommended to the hr director by the interviewing committee were not presented to the board one of which was in august of 2016 where a interviewing committee for a site coordinator position at margot elementary and a cochlear held elementary the recommendations were not presented to the board instead there was additional interviews that were conducted which resulted in the recommendation of new candidates ultimately presented uh to and approved by the board uh so there were you know based on our review of the documentation there was a recommendation for uh two individuals and um it's unclear know what they went to the hr department they never made it to the board and it's unclear you know where the you know they the candidates were not uh approved and why the decision was made to go back and do additional interviews we also in in january 2018 we identified a recommendation that was submitted by the interviewing committee for an ela teaching position at mary hogue middle school the hr director informed the campus principal that they would need to either recommend a different candidate or hire a permanent substitute for the remainder of the semester so that individual that was being recommended was was never uh presented uh to the board uh we when we uh interviewed the former hr director what uh we were told was that while they didn't remember this specific instance that it would have been the former superintendent if there was any situation where a individual that was recommended by the interviewing committee was not presented to the board for approval that it would have been uh the superintendent that made that rejection but we have not uh identified any any documentation to say one way or the other at this point we also identified instances where candidates recommended by the interviewing committee and the superintendent were not approved by the board so these were three instances where individuals were presented to the board for approval but not not approved by the board so the first was july 2016 for the horton aep principal position uh where uh you know a candidate was uh you know presented and the board did not approve them and ultimately a different candidate was approved in august of 2016 the following month uh and then in november 2016 there was a candidate that was recommended by the interviewing committee uh and by the superintendent for the ace site coordinator position at rico elementary it was not approved by the board uh based on a review of the meeting minutes uh the the board uh selected the the candidates were ranked one through uh 10 and the second ranked candidate was approved instead of the the first rate candidate i in june 2019 there was a recommendation uh by the interviewing committee for a math teacher position at mary hope middle school that was also not approved by the board and ultimately another candidate was recommended at a subsequent meeting um and so our our understanding was that uh the the board at what time um you know asked the uh you know for the for the campus to make sure that they uh had recommended that they considered all of the candidates equally and then ultimately the a different candidate was presented to the board and was approved uh in our review of the district's hiring practices we also uh identified um a a higher in january of 2015 related to the campus instructional facilitator position at uh west dakota east high school uh we noted uh that there were 16 candidates who applied for the position based on the email correspondence regarding the within the hr department um the interim principal at westlake east high school at that time we determined through the review of the email in google drive data the the applicant list was revised and an additional candidate was added to the list of individuals to be interviewed who had not applied for the position that same candidate was then recommended for the position by the interviewing committee um and we also uh were informed that the candidate who was recommended by the interviewing committee and then ultimately approved by the board was was not the top ranked candidate um initially based on the interviewing committee uh and discussions with members from that interviewing committee where we were informed they were asked to revise their evaluation sheets to reflect the candidate who uh same candidate that did not apply originally that was ultimately approved for the position so in summary from our review of the hiring practices um we identified a pattern of micromanagement by the board to influence the hiring process especially during the 2014 to 2016 time period we noted the candidates who were recommended to the board were rejected and in certain instances a less qualified candidate was hired instead it also appeared that the former hr administrator hr director influenced the recommendations from the interviewing committee in certain instances uh our review also included uh with respect to the practices and procedures of uh human resources was uh we looked at job descriptions um we reviewed the job descriptions for 280 positions we determined that 161 of those uh have not been revised since september 2014 uh early they have they had not been revised at the time that we conducted a review uh in the spring and summer of this year some of the instances that we noted with respect to the experience and educational requirements for positions was the the job description for ace site coordinator uh the job description was revised in september 2016 uh where the requirement for a master's degree was removed the district had previously hired several individuals for the position who did not have a master's degree and then for that same position in october 2017 um in in the ace program being a federal program um in advance of a of an audit um for the federal program we know that the job description that was submitted uh for that end of the year audit for ace site coordinator i was revised to change the requirement for a teaching certificate from uh where it was previously required it was changed to preferred and we noted that several of the ace site coordinators at that time did not have their teaching certificate we also reviewed the district's salary and compensation as it relates to the compensation plan the pay scales as well as the actual payroll register of compensation paid one of the findings that we had was we noted that the construction maintenance manager position uh which was filled in november 2018 it was not included or did not appear to be included in the compensation plan that was approved by the board on august 20th 2018. uh it appears that the compensation plan was revised by the hr department to add the position on august 31st 2018 however it was not formally approved by the board until december 2018 so in effect the individual was hired for the position before the board you know formally approved the position into the compensation plan we identified 17 instances where position was reclassified uh to another pay grade during the period of our review uh two two of those positions were reclassified twice and uh most of if not all of those three classifications resulted in a pay increase for that position and and again the the detail of those positions and that there's a table in the the report itself that details that we noted that the assistant athletic director position was reclassified in for the 2019-2020 compensation plan from pay grade 103 to pay grade 203 which uh was a lower uh pay range you know as far as the minimum midpoint maximum but we also noted that the physician uh retained the same pay range from pay grade 103 instead of being modified to reflect the pay grade 203 so in effect we had a a situation where the position was uh different compared to the other positions that are uh of the same uh pay grade and number of days within that 203 um and uh we noted that uh you know there was uh some in one of the interviews we were discussing about this um you know we were informed that this was something that the former hr director was aware of but um that was uh they were told that that's the way that they it was you know it wasn't a mistake that that the intent was to have that pay grade you know stay the same as it had been at pay grade 103. we also analyzed the district's payroll register and specifically related to look at pay increases for administrative and professional employees so this table shows the the distribution of uh the number of employees within each pay range uh based on their pay increases and so uh what uh what what this shows is that uh you know over the five-year period uh you know most of the pay increases were in the zero to five percent with you know over three thousand um uh individuals over that period that the pay increase was in that range followed by then five to ten percent um you know we there's a number of different one-off type of you know promotions or people employees that you know leave or uh mid-year that you know may account for some of the you know decreases or some of the anomalies where it's over you know 30 percent we reviewed the payroll register uh with respect to the pay scales and compensation plan uh to determine whether or not uh employees were being paid within their pay range we determined that there were 300 employees or approximately 300 employees who received salaries above the maximum for their assigned pay range in 2019 and 2020 compared to around 250 for fiscal year 2019 many of these physicians being part-time employees so you know bus drivers some of the cafeteria staff those types of positions we analyzed the extra duty pay uh based on the information from the payroll register and during the period of our review uh that that extra duty pay total of 35.8 million the majority of which was related to coaching the stipends which were categorized as extra duty pay in the in the payroll register summer school as well as overtime pay for bus drivers mechanics within the transportation department we looked at travel allowances or expense allowances or sorry employee allowances um in the payroll register as well we identified approximately 700 000 uh that were travel allowances during this period we noted that the travel allowance the monthly amount increased or was increased by the board in 2015 from 200 a month to 500 a month with 22 employees receiving travel allowances as of uh fiscal year 2020 which was i believe it was 15 or 16 as of 2015 so there was a you know increase in both the monthly amount as well as the uh number of employees that were receiving that amount we determined that there were certain positions uh that appeared uh to be receiving travel allowances that uh do not appear to require regular travel so there was uh you know review to see if uh determine which positions receive the travel allowance and then um uh you know determine if there is travel required for those positions and finally we were asked to look at the district's organizational structure and we determined that the current structure which includes eight individuals reporting directly to the superintendent uh we noted that that appear to be above average compared to similar school districts however not unreasonable for the size of the district the operations functions are divided among four different organizations which include business finance and then support services then employee benefits and risk management and then the fourth one being athletics and district facilities uh we noted that the employee benefit and risk management is separate from the human resources even though there is a overlap in the functional functionality of those departments we noted that the assistant superintendent and support services position is poorly defined and somewhat functionally misaligned and responsible for an inconsis inconsistent scope of work the way that it's defined in the uh organizational chart uh we also noted that the executive director of athletics and district facilities position combines two broad scripts of responsibility with minimal functional connection and that is the summary of our findings from the the two reports we also um we also have uh recommendations that uh i'm not gonna read now unless you'd like me to but they are included in each of the two reports thank you travis for that presentation um i'll move over to item five discussion on weaver and tidwell llp planet final forensic audit report anybody have any questions no i i i don't know if we need travis on there anymore because uh you know most of these questions from from this point on should be directed to to staff and to uh obviously not our superintendent uh right now but um so i travis we well i like to you know have them stay on you know i think you know just in case you know something pertains to to his findings or you know and what and i i'd like for him to go ahead and stay on you know just to just in case travis sure he had no no problem i'm happy to stay on yeah not a problem at all i have one i'm going to go ahead and start i guess pos travis i know you've looked at hundreds of districts how common is it to have the amount that we have 58.4 million dollars with no tracing of pos or anything like that you know what in your in your professional opinion or can you give us a definition to a purchase order or appeal i think what i would say is that the you know the there's nothing that legally requires you know within the teas purchasing guidelines for uh every purchase to have a purchase order i think as a best practice it's it's something that does provide that control and an approval framework uh and so one of the common uh you know types of analytics that we do is to determine that you look at the purchases that do not have a purchase order to uh to determine if if that's you know due to the fact that you know there it's circumventing the approval process and um and and you know could be potential fraud waste and abuse uh i think what we determined here was based on the nature and the size of these purchases that it did not appear to be uh you know a uh an attempt to circumvent those uh internal controls uh given that they were uh you know substantial and you know most of these i think the there's 15 vendors that accounted for um you know i think 53 million of that that were you know large benefits um payments uh for those administrative uh services for the benefits that um you know were authorized by the board and were you know approved um you know accordingly so it didn't appear uh that in you know for the majority of those large ones that that was the intent was to you know circumvent the internal controls but in your opinion for best practices pos would be ideal to be utilized throughout the district correct i think in in general as a best practice um that that having the purchase orders um you know would qualify as you know best practices um is i think in general uh jared do you have any any thoughts on on that question no i agree with uh your response and that's the the right way to look at it okay thank you um i guess we're gonna bounce around with questions because i'm looking through my notes as well here special ed funds you know uh i noticed we had an expenditure of 190 000 now we're using federal funding there how important is it to have peels for for special ed you know in in in order to remain or have you know that internal control for the district yeah i i think it's the the the same uh you know the same explanation as the you know purchase order process um and uh you know we did identify you know within the audio scan for those those uh five vendors um that we reviewed that there were uh you know contracts in place and um and time sheets and invoices um and so you know we did given that there there were i believe it was 20 29 of the uh payments that we looked at that did not have you know purchase order yeah um you know we did want to make sure that you know there was um you know services actually being performed and you know i think it would be uh you know a little bit more rigorous analysis to you know for us to get to the level of looking at hourly timesheets to determine that you know every payment um you know that the services were performed but you know in general we did identify that there was that supporting documentation but certainly uh you know i think the best practice would be to have purchase orders in place for you know 100 of those payments okay i guess i can go ahead and direct my question to andres since we are talking about pos andres is this a common practice that we don't have we don't utilize pos we do use purchase orders for special ed consultants mr trevino what happens a lot of the time some of the schools that they had in the purchaser were not serviced and since the invoice did not agree to the purchase order the items that were included the department doesn't pay him so then they go through a request for payment if he matches the po is paid automatically with the purchaser if he doesn't it has to go through a request payment and that is why they did go like that most of those payments are like that there might be some that we didn't but most of them have a purchase order i've spoken to the specialized department of all times and we emphasize at the beginning of this year again do a purchase order larger than before to make sure that you include all the schools even put an amount a thousand dollars sometimes you say well we had more kids sir so i came up to 1200 so there wasn't enough money in that purchase for we have a thousand there's 1200 for that line that's cool so we ended up with our price payment that is what the payments don't have the appeal but the appeals were done okay if i may just piggy back off of him we're number four out of 112 districts with professional service costs so number four out of 112 is a lot and these are professional service costs that we're paying correct those are consulting uh people i'm guessing they're professional service right and to be number four out of a hundred and something saying is saying something to me looking at the data i'm thinking okay we're paying a lot more for this than what other districts are paying for this are we supervising that budget versus actual numbers because when we look at this data here we're way over on what we actually budgeted and what was spent so where's the supervision to say we need to stop there's no more money in the budget for this well uh in the event oh it depends on what the item was for example special aid we don't want to stop the services for the kids because they need it some of the consultants could have been start development i'm not sure i would need to see more details so i can provide a better answer one thing i would add you know with respect i i think on professional services where you know we're referencing the uh the object code 6219 and then the the one that's ranked fourth is the for uh combining that with the function 41 for general administration of uh about a million 32 903 was fourth out of 105. i i think that's what you're referencing um and i do want to point out that um you know that there are differences with the way that different school districts classify these expenditures in that we take that into account and so you know these the the benchmarking section the way that we typically use it as kind of a starting place to identify areas for for further review but we are aware that the way that some districts classify you know especially with object or function codes there may be some some differences there so i do want to make that make that point so just to clarify travis so some districts or we might be including more services in that classification than other districts or is that is that what you're trying to say there there is some element of the with the team's data where if uh you know if west the co isd is reporting uh classifying expenditures to professional services and then in this case function 41 you know general administration that that they may be classified to either a different object code or a different function code you know at another school district and so there is some element of uh you know this is where you know our goal is to get to the smallest possible cost categories and have apple's apples and you know it's it's uh it's it's not perfect because there are differences in discretion about assigning codes um an interpretation of where these some of these costs fit but there could be differences there um you know without looking at the details for the other 112 school districts it's really hard to say but uh you know in general that's kind of been uh something that we do take into consideration mr sanchez just a quick question in regards to the items that travis pointed out in regards to holiday gifts that's those are gifts for students staff i remember for students yes we given allocated money to the to the schools in the section between 160 to 190 000 for all the students of the district and we we don't call it a holiday gift we call it a hard work for the first semester duplicate because there's no such a thing as holiday item and the texas education code but as for our end of the semester incentives that the students receive and they've been getting it for a long time okay and every year it's about that a month for the students alone and is that something where we can give them more ample time so that they can yes we will work on that proposals yes yeah one thing that stood out to me was due to timing constraints and i've been hearing that a lot from well the reason why we don't get to the information is because it takes longer on the business side oh it's because it's taking longer in the business so those time constraints do affect everything else you know so to say there's a better way to manage that that would be a great thing to do yeah the budget for those signing we did release them late several times so we will work on that to release them early no budget that is not money that is in the budget allocated to the schools it usually we come to the board to get requested money from fund balance or we have it in a contingency account like we have at this year and they were classified from there to the schools but we usually check with the superintendent this is the amount i'm going to do it again get the approval and then we'll release it but we have money allocated this year and the contingency account will take it from there to the schools it will release early in october but they will run into that situation my my concern with this is i know from looking at the other other uh previous budgets that you presented to us we already have an awards an incentive account i believe we have a 500 000 set aside for that so you're telling me that not only that that here we're moving another 100 000 or whatever it may be over for the holiday incentive or are you taking it from that budget from what's budgeted yearly the 500 000 that you mentioned is that the account covered to the awards that we've included in the budget yes that's only for staff most studies for staff there might be some for students but the amount that we give to the schools is separate amount that we give them so that's only staff yes sir there might be some schools there as well but not everybody has the same amount for that all right well i think that anybody allocated amount for that here's my other concern with that is is uh just like this this holiday incentive time constraint and so forth it all this all these expenditures are all going to one company and they're all going to embroidery express can you please let me provide how can every campus everybody in the district go with one vendor it almost seems like we're funneling to one vendor so why would that be happy you know why is that happening i know that this has been brought up before yes even even this right here so to me looking at this holiday incentive fund oh hey it's almost a convenient thing to do hey let's wait to the last minute and we'll put the stipulation where we don't have to do any quote and i guarantee you if we look at all those uh purchases during that time for the holiday they all come from one company well the uh the amount of the budget was nothing intentionally not absolutely it was not intentional so that that vendor could get the award that had nothing to do with that okay i was saying we're late that's our fault but it had nothing to do with that when we give the money to their schools even when they have time we we had approved before that up to 3 000 they could buy from any vendor that would change that last time we recommend the 500 and it got changed by the vote of 300. so they'll go get quotes and when they get the quotes and they get the lower price what can we say all right here's here's the thing with that on this and and this is brought up this was brought up the other day with ambulance thing sure and and i mean it's all public record i mean it's we it was an open meeting so i'm going to go ahead and bring it up eventually it almost seems like we're why even have a bit processing we're seeing here manipulating the bid process to get people in to me here looking at this reviewing it over over the past few days to me it seems like there is some manipulating going on just like with that ambulance hey let's let's get this ambulance company in at this price and coming to find out every year it's exceeding the amount that we that we're budgeting for or that we're taking them and we're not we're not even opening it up to any quote because they're the only ones that uh they were under the 48 000 or whatever it was but they never they always exceeded that amount well i i did provide information that was given to me yeah that was incorrect we'll provide it i've provided an update to you all and the agenda for tomorrow has the revised information but the vendor that i mentioned at that time is we didn't have a request for proposal that the board approved was an option for an extension so we brought back to the board the extension for the board to extend it all go out for proposals one of the two vendors that was waterproof back then uh went out of business so there was only one left so we talked to the uh uh attorney clinton mr manuel mr vanuelos addis high school which was handling the ambulances and he said yeah the company has done good service for us we checked with the company and said yeah we can handle all the services of the district so we recommended them but it wasn't within the bid there's nothing illegal the numbers were wrong i understand i admit it but nothing illegal about what we propose i'm not and i'm not saying it's illegal but but if the you're but the process is wrong follow your process if if you're going to sit here and bring an ambulance company to us and present to us hey we're it's only it's said it's capped off at eight thousand dollars or whatever it was that number that that yeah was presented i think it was forty eight thousand forty nine forty nine thousand okay and then to come back every single year with the information that you provided every year we've exceeded that amount so why not why are we sitting here allowing this company to come in at 48 000 and we're only sticking with them no the the 48 000 was not the company figure that was the figure provided based a number of games estimated games charts this is the amount we estimate will be not something that the company provided here's another one that that uh now that we're talking about something like that is is look at the report but let me just let me follow up on embroidery express you know mr kassner just a question in regards to embroidery express did you maybe dig deeper and ask you know principals or offices you know to see if if what what the pattern was with using embroidery express or do you feel that business office is funneling to inviter express uh so i think though we did dig deeper and i think what we found was you know one with the uh you know every two years they submit you know several five or six or seven vendors submit their packages in some cases they require uh they're required to submit samples of you know materials and uh there's evaluations that are being uh completed by both campus principals as well as individuals from the purchasing office and across the board it does seem that embroidery express is the highest rated vendor um for they they have several different categories one of them is quality one of them is the timeliness and responsiveness and um what i gathered was that people are comfortable with a vendor that they've been utilizing or that they've worked with before and that you know in some cases it's maybe because they're local that some of the other ones were as well we also talked i did talk to some principals about um this particular vendor to see if there was you know uh kind of what was the reason uh you know for their campus of why they always purchased from there and you know one of the things was consistency as far as the you know color meaning there may be some slight differences in the shade of a color with one vendor versus another and so there may be some kind of advantage for a vendor um where they kind of it extends you know wanting to stay consistent with that color you know may be a benefit um but we did talk to you we looked at the documentation regarding the the evaluations from 2015 and 16 and 17 and 18 and then talked to several people from campuses and purchasing and it was you know they all had you know similar reasons for that's why they always uh you know and we did see some memos where um i think we included one of them in the as an exhibit to the report where they said that they had a bad experience with another vendor for um like i think it was for custodial apparel and that they were requesting to you know use embroidery express because because of that so there was different reasons but you know kind of it was kind of across the board that's the preferred vendor uh at all the campuses and were they on the list for affiliated vendors no but there there is there is a a relation to one he that that the owner from that company there is a relationship or not relationship there uh he is a relative to one of one of the current board members here whether it's second or third degree whatever it may be there is a connection there with with one of our current board members and we we did talk to the one of the current board members and um you know i think we where we draw the line as far as um our process you know uh typically our list of relatives that were you know for each board member we're looking at uh what we call the close uh family members which would typically be you know parents uh children siblings uncles you know uh and so i think it would be inconsistent to you know for one instance to include a second or third cousin um because that's not the approach you know and it would uh with the guidelines related to the tea and related to purchasing ethics i think that would also uh you know fall outside of that con sanguidi you know uh metric yeah sure okay before moving on to report number one i know we're doing report number two i'd like to make a statement okay and after reading report number two like i said there's a lot of information in this report that wasn't in the summary of course because due to time but what i can say is that i've always had a concern as a parent as a taxpayer as far as the last couple years on how our district uh where the focus is especially with our finances and our in our in our and our in our funds state local federal and coming onto the board and looking at the budget and looking how things operate especially on the business side there has been many concerns for me because i think that we had lost focus over that's my opinion over the years especially when you look at awards and incentives not the process on how it was actually done i i like the report i like the fact that there is positiveness here as far as some cases we do need to work on of course there is work there there is management there needs to be more management that needs to take place as far as some of the expenditures and how we're spending that money and whether it's actually effective or not is there any return fixing buses that hardly have any miles spending 14 000 plus on the buses only moved 70 miles there are there's concerns there but those are management that's internal that something needs to be looked at by department and also look at that look at the supervisors and the qualification experience and experiences of those individuals to see if they're capable of actually following through with their duties but when you look at awards incentives first that's an example right here and i'll give you many is that we you we we see a pattern where things are budgeted at 500 000 but yet you know that you're going to spend 800 to 900 000 and awards and incentives a lot of that being in our embroidery and on t-shirts those those a lot of those funds are coming from local funds those are taxpayer dollars taxpayer dollars are coming from people's residential income residential taxes and those res those residential taxes are not to be used as as far as discretionary where you can spend them any way you want to they they actually have to be spent on instructional academic instruction that's the purpose of it that's why people work so hard to pay their taxes and that's just one of many areas where you see that you're you're spending 800 to 900 000 as a district as an administration that's what i'm saying as a whole over these time year after year we budgeted 500 we spent 800 to 900 dollars of people's uh property taxes and when in comparison when you look at the amount that was that was um designated for instructional materials you're looking at six hundred thousand you know four hundred and eighty two thousand twenty seventeen the focus that's that's kind of the message that i wanted to send especially when i was running especially when we came in and said let's do an audit because i think the audit is a great tool i think it's good because it highlights where we need to work and it highlights also what we've been doing well and we just continue to build on that but the focus when you look at that you see that you know awards incentives 800 to 900 000 600 000 for instructional resources 482 in 2017 compared to 891. it's a big discrepancy instructional resources for the classroom versus t-shirts and that's why we have a lot of staff this this report is because staff staff community members taxpayers parents those major concerns other board members have have acknowledged that already as well too but it's good to do a self-analysis and a review and and even in under these conditions we're still operating at a high level academically in the region and even compared to the state so that's a plus because our campuses our campus admin and our staff there and our support staff are highly effective okay regardless of the fact that they've been crying out for more resources is more in the classroom and more help on campus as far as resources as well but those are the things that we need to look at i think this report kind of you know it highlights that the policies and procedures in place but where's our focus you know it's like i always tell people we need to transition our focus i've said this to board members a little too i think it's some meetings i said you stand on the corner of pike and westgate you'll see exactly where our focus has been for the last couple years you look at an 8 million dollar sky box or 68 million dollar sky box and you look at a multi-million dollar uh scoreboard but then take a look at west circle high school and the condition that it's in we need to refocus on where we're at because our competitors they're not focusing they don't have the same focus as we do and thank god that our report in report number two is nowhere near to close to theirs at least ours is going to be public for the for the for the taxpayers to see where their money went and to know hey your money is being focused you know we're following policy and procedures we just need to readjust focus but i'm with report number two i'm very content compared to uh the other organization that's in our in our city and some of the things that we've heard about how they were spending money and utilizing taxpayer dollars because those dollars belong to those dollars belong to our taxpayers here within the city as well so i just wanted to note that and i know that there's issues like i said transportation those are things that need to be reviewed our spending the policy and procedures were in place uh some areas i said questionable it's all about perception and how people want to look at that but that's up to our to our district administration and our superintendent but that's the statement i just wanted to make that we need to readjust our focus how our our monies are being spent and it should be in the classroom it should be student first and and also the time frame i know uh mr trevino talked about the turnaround time and that's always been a concern but it's surprising to me that we've been talking about air filtration systems we've been talking about roofs and ac systems and and this is i know not everybody watches the board meeting but hopefully they're watching today and in those board meetings i've asked from 2014 to 2019 with tax liens and money's been taken out of the general fund you're looking at over 40 million dollars but yet sitting on our laps now this year now sitting on our left this year is is um over 20 million dollars for roofs because multiple campers need roofs and then ac systems as well covet 19 but also outdated and not used and systems that are not being used and don't have materials and what not to to upgrade and fix so mike and that's a 40 i think it was about 30 40 million for the ac systems that we're looking at so all in all you're looking about 60 plus million dollars my question has been uh i asked the previous maintenance director and i asked the current one that we have now and i said why between 2014 and 2019 if you spent over 40 million dollars in loans and coming out of general fund did you not address or prioritize the roof and ac systems everybody has a home everybody has a home knows that your roof is priority number one and there's no way that all our roofs went out at the same time because they all need to be repaired this year and the question that i got from the previous of the uh maintenance i call it director but maintenance director and the current one we have now is that they did have the roofs in the ac systems as a party and when i asked him okay then if there were a priority then what happened and he says well the board had a different priority they they they identified different priorities and those are the kind of things that i really want to push because i've said it been very vocal i want to remove the school board from day to day operations as a hundred percent as much as i possibly can because in some cases it's not effective and it doesn't have any productivity and we need to do that so i'm going to continue on and report number one but as far as policies and procedures they're in place but our focus you know that's that's kind of the upright here is we need to really focus on what's important students first campuses as well because they're the ones that are productive they're the ones that bring back they're the ones that produce the product that we want here which is academic excellence so reading report number two i see it um as an as a board member but more importantly as a parent of taxpayer am i am i concerned of where the focus is yes and and i'm still going to be concerned until we start to slowly move toward the right direction which is in going student student and campus level classrooms first and everybody else that supplements them so i just wanted to let that be known and on the record can i make a comment concerning awards uh i did not indeed mention in the budget when we approved it that we have put a cap even says last year of 25 for those amounts so that should bring the amount of expenditures to less a month for awards and and i think all a lot of this could could have been avoided why not just implement the quote system why i i worked in the district for all those years and anytime we had to buy something we had to submit uh quotes for you why for some and not for all that's my question that's what i want to get to no we do have it for all we do have a problem we have uh i mentioned we have proposals approved under the border proof six vendors from proposals from those we have to have okay okay yes one of you mentioned that it was taking too long to process things one of the things we did before we had to have three quotes at least three quotes from purchases of 500 or more everybody complain oh purchaser is taking too long so you know what we're going to raise them to 3 000 to facilitate purchases of the schools and departments and make it faster so everybody started getting happier so we moved up to 3 000. that is why we use 3 000 for that and any other proposal we have to do for maintenance as well it's not just for that particular awards item we deal it for everything three thousand i think when we're talking about the delay and and i know we've heard it there's been a quest from from like i said from staff as far as delays but there there is certain cases delays construction gets right on our table within seconds but eight but we talked about the elf elf air filtration systems with our previous maintenance director back in december i think mr medical gossip was there when they were bringing the initial proposal coming in and so when we're doing that presentation it's a workshop it's posted online right and and during that workshop as well too we talked about okay what what steps are we going to take they were talking about replacing ac systems at the time we didn't have extra funds we didn't know how much we're going to get if we're going to have them and and and and the proposal was pretty much unrealistic there was no way that we were going to be able to afford that amount it was at a massive amount i don't remember it i don't want to see the exact numbers but it was double-digit millions there was no way that we were going to address all the all the campuses uh like that and i and then finally in the presentation i think i remember mr garcia was there well one of the board trustees asked well what's that in the corner that little picture there and he says oh that's a that's a hepa filtration system and then he went and then he stepped up and he started talking about the hepa filtration system talking about how it's used in surgical wards it's throughout hospitals throughout the nation it's affordable it's easy to replace in maintenance and it's highly effective and we asked him sir why did we not go this route here we are in december talking about filtration systems we already had kids coming back even though we had a large percentage still at the campus and i asked them why did you go this route why don't you show this to the previous board he says we did but they decided to go on a different route one that was really one that was unattainable there was no way we were going to afford that other method there was no way that even at the time they were even able to to contract all the campuses even if we did have the money and so see that's what i'm saying when we're looking at our expenditures and payments to vendors and contractors and whatnot the process is fine but the focus is wrong so that's what i'm saying why can't we get construction overnight across the board getting to the table but yet other issues like the filtration systems um i think there were some other issues that were looking at more death shields and then we're looking at the telemet services other other campus-based classroom-based initiatives take just too much too long compared to construction construction comes to the table quick it gets done processes bid it out etc but yet those classroom level initiatives take just too long we're barely going to talk about telemed and we brought that back up in december of 2020 and we're and then look at the timeline also for or for those hepa filter systems that we put in every single classroom above capacity make our classrooms entirely safe and we put them through all of our all our schools and they even moved forward and did that even in the buses as well too so but that took time and that took just too long so the administration what i'm trying to say is let's focus on classroom initiatives and let's do as much possible maybe hopefully at the same level as construction and then that way we can get campuses and students the resources they need in on time okay thank you that's all i wanted to say i would a doctor like to see us implemented and and yes i know just like right now i think there's four or five companies ranked correct so now when when unless you're going for something over three thousand dollars you already have those companies they're correct for incentives for incentives or whatever yet it depends on the item how many companies bid on the proposal i i would like to see us bring that limit down and prov and and request quotes that we bring down say that which item is that again just in general instead of having the limit at three thousand dollars but i think we change it now here's the other here's another one where i'm going to question the process andres and to me you guys you guys have you guys are are are the ones in charge whatever you bring to us you know it needs to be it needs to be you're our eyes and ears and here i was looking over the report and i looked back on the for the transportation i noticed that that in june or sometime back there had been a a proposal sent out requests and bids and i think four responded and one that empty mvtr they were left out so here recently i just come to find out that in june we we accepted that i guess you guys reopened it up again i believe so it was reopened up again to me it's a big red flag especially after looking all the expenditures that have gone to that company and after noticing that there's a relation there that the nephew is married to the niece of the owner of the other company that the owner from the other companies is coming on the campus offering tickets all that i mean it's all in the report yes i mean yes you may not know that part but you guys even miss levels i think that they fall under you why would we allow it allow hey if he missed a deadline he missed the deadline why are we catering to companies is my question why would we ever reopen it up instead of using the four the four that took the time to apply correctly to submit the bid why would we open it back up much later and allow this company to come in and you this is where i'm blame it on you because you're our eyes and ears i don't know who this company or whatever or why we open reopened that but i listened to the excuse i was written on here and it doesn't make sense if because most of these companies that are applying here or that are submitting proposals they're all credible companies i mean that that's what they do so why sit here and allow us to i feel like you allowed us to walk right into it and no i mean i'm going to call it what it is you you may sit there and not tell you guys are are there to be our watchful and i know maybe you know he stated his reasons why and they're in here in the audit report but to me it just does not make sense to reopen it up because it almost seems like we are catering to one company and that's not the way things should be that's right that correct so i i those are the practices that for me bring the lack of confidence in how we're doing things there's a big lack of confidence in in our internal control from hr practices to budgeting to everything we're doing right now you know we you submit a budget to us and coming to find out now by looking at all our forms everything's always exceeds everything always exceeds the budgeted amount so when are we ever going to function correctly and just stay at one at the appropriate level that we submit that we agreed to you know that we agreed to this past august so that's a big concern of mine when when i see when i see us manipulating out and manipulating the bid process i think in one case um talking about there's tactics in school districts that people utilize sometimes to for whatever reason it may be but but like in one case and here in the audit in the investigation report for report number two there's an instance where the buses the whole fleet was being serviced and i think it ranged 400 and 400 or 500 uh in that range the whole fleet was being serviced and then there was independent pos that were done for every that was for every single bus rather than than doing one large po for the service overall for the entire fleet and then you would have to then at that point you would probably circum you would probably hit the requirements when you have to go out for bids it just kind of didn't make sense so like those type of things it's noted in the report that's why i don't want you you know i'm not questioning you i'm just highlighting that i know that he brought up the ambulance service the other time and we already have a longitudinal history that these individuals are going to pass the 50 000 threshold or whatever the case may be then let's just follow through and then i know it'll take a little bit longer but we go to bid for process and we just follow our policy and protocols we don't want to circumvent any type of not saying you are but we don't want to create a situation where it looks that way right or it's apparent that way that we're kind of going by our controls past our controls and i think that's just a concern is just to identify that i think that's i think i appreciate you bringing that up mark because i that that was the last or that was one of the things i wanted to hit on was a 22 buses 22 different invoices how does that not come up as a red flag for us when that i know you guys questioned him at one point before the excessive amount of expenditures but there was no follow-through we allowed it to continue to happen what have we done and to control that spending right now because obviously that's over budget i don't think there's a is it an open budget for for repairing old buses no no that's what it looks like to me it's on the agenda tomorrow isn't it yes so that right there i mean you guys tell me how we are going around the system and you guys are directly responding i mean you are because you write the checks and you sign off on that uh mr larosa you're in charge because that's your department and for us to allow that to happen that's a big major red flag in any if that was happening in any other department well yeah i mean it wouldn't be allowed in the athletic department or anything else why would we allow it here is my question i don't have anything to give you right now i need to look at it as i was reviewing it so i guess i'm gonna feel whatever i was imagining or whatever i'm thinking or whatever i mean i'm thinking is that's exactly what's happening we are manipulating the system that that's my problem here the process and that's why there is a lack of confidence in everything we're doing because this is not right and you know thankfully we did this this audit because hopefully this will align us to do the right thing which we're not in every aspect and this right here is our checks and balances which we don't have because if we're allowing that then you should be held responsible for that mr la rosa and everybody else and yourself because you're the one looking at that budget and coach trevino that is one of the recommendations from from weaver and tidwell as far as the recommendation for the district to review and potentially modify if necessary the procurement process for bus repair maintenance expenditures to ensure that the process meets the district's guidelines for obtaining multiple quotes and is also aligned with the transportation goals for timeliness of repairs and maintenance so um we will adhere and enforce these internal controls right and recommendations from the firm i feel like since we came on board back last year we've known about a lot of these situations going on and we've been asking and asking and out crying pricking and screaming please do something please help please move on this and it's we meet hesitance we there's resistance all the time to can you please check up for example we're number five once again professional uh contract deserve professional services number four that includes value risk consulting that includes therapies uh consultants when we were elected we told the people we're going to listen we're listening to all the concerns and of course people come to you and they tell you look into this look into that one thing big one was consulting westlake spends a lot on consultants i didn't i mean the report is here but mr dosa worked the valley risk consulting and we are trying to i mean we have them they're consult there are consultants right now value risk consulting right and we keep bringing them back to the agenda i see a conflict of interest there have you worked for somebody and they were trying to get them to come back and help leslie well that's kind of it doesn't look right and then i'm looking at their those therapies those consultants we kept saying pushing pushing pushing we need an in-house ot we're spending too much on consultants we need us in-house uh physical therapist we're spending too much consultants kicking and screaming about it and i had to go i mean we we there's a lot of emails and stuff but it got done this year thank god with the help of you guys you know you you guys helped out but there's a lot of spending on those professional services those those consultants and come i come to find out that some of those therapies are family members of other board members in other cities so is there a conflict of interest i don't know we didn't dig into that to see but there's too much spending on these consultants when we have people in our district who can do it in-house and it doesn't make sense and when i feel like we're trying to just hide it and let them come in and let's pay them on they're going to help us when we really don't need to so yes people are telling us these things we're asking for help let's move on that because the focus like mr delos santos said it's the students it's the kids if that's what we're here for it's not let's help this company and let's help that company it's the kids and this really opened up our eyes when we see that we're top ranked for these expenses so that's just what i wanted to say and that's it okay would you like us to take a deeper dive into the um consulting services and then see consulting services and then a breakdown of yeah i'm sure we need some i mean but not all probably or not so many and i see the people here in the crowd that they work in the district too that are saying yes it's true you know we work there and we see it and so yeah if we could look into that and that would be great okay thank you mr mr uh kasner i i know i took some notes last night and i know our bus increased from two from 2015 to 2020 and i had it somewhere it jumped up like from six thousand dollars maybe a quarter that was being that was going to this cut to to this company or any other company to strictly going to mvtr and it was a substantial amount per quarter i think it was like 40 something thousand is is that correct correct yeah it was uh so what we say in the report that the payments were uh well from an annual standpoint they tripled from 54 000 in fiscal year 2016 uh to over 173 000 in fiscal year 2017. so that's kind of on an annual basis but uh looking at the the quarterly bars on page 39 of uh report number two that the uh you know i don't want to try to you know 30 to 50 000 seems to be kind of the cup per quarter uh is the you know typical range for payments uh to mbtr for bus repair and maintenance yes sir yeah i just found that here on that page yes we went from 6 000 a quarter prior to july 6 prior to july 2016 to 42 000 per quarter now again my question is going to be to to mr larosa since you are directly over this and i don't know how when you obta when you you uh acquired that as under under your umbrella but that's a substantial amount of spending that's happening in that department and i know buses but i know in 2018 we just got a brand new fleet i believe uh good evening uh um mr davido members of the board dr rodriguez uh so i believe my tenure as overseeing the department uh took over i believe i'm going to say 2016 2017 uh but to answer your question we did devise a a procedure in a process where we did realize that there was you know a lot of money being spent on maintenance so there was a process that was that was uh um created where a paper trailer if you will and i'm sure mr kasner seen all the documentation where the mechanic in essence identifies a problem uh writes a memo to the shop form and that says bus 25 needs this it's beyond my expertise and we don't have the parts whatever the reason may be the uh shop foreman or the shop supervisor looks at that memo and agrees with it or disagrees with it and writes a memo to the transportation department or the transportation director recommending the service and then the director you know puts in the po so we did try to you know put in a process which we try to control those expenses you know i do have a wide range of expertise unfortunately mechanics is not one of them so uh we do have to take the word of the people that are on the ground actually doing the work on these on these on the fleet and of course safety is paramount and we don't want to take any chances with the safety of our students with a you know with a brake line failing or suspension you know you know coming undone a tire falling off you know god forbid so um before the director took over uh the the shape of the fleet you know especially when when i started getting involved the the we had a very very old fleet and um you know for lack of a better term the you know the flood was actually kind of a blessing in disguise because we're able to you know purchase these uh new units you know uh with the insurance proceeds so there is you know procedures and processes in place but uh i believe we've taken a you know sharper look at it over the last couple years and that has gone down but certainly uh after i have a chance to read the the report and uh we'll come back to you with recommendations and things we're going to do to address these issues i would in and you know you brought up the flood in 2018 we got new buses you know i know i would like to see i guess through here it is right here through we got new buses our expenditure still continued through 2019 quarter one or really fourth quarter i don't know when exactly we got those buses and i i think it was probably during the second quarter okay so here we are in the third quarter we have brand new buses and we're still spending close to fifty thousand dollars fourth quarter we we spent fifty five thousand in that for that quarter then we go back to 2019 for the year 2019 we have brand new buses and we're still spending close to 40 000 are we spending that amount on those old buses on the 21 spare buses that that have less than 100 miles those more than likely were what we're spending the money on because again the new buses had warranty work so again to keep those up and running and safe because they were used uh not so much in 2020 but in 2019 uh when we were full throttle uh even in 2018 with events and stuff like that and even though buses are new they do uh break down and they go to the uh the dealer for maintenance work or warranty work so that's when we have to go back to this to the spares and run those run those buses so we can continue to continue to maintain operations so it is still even though they're they're they're there they're not being utilized but we still have to maintain that old fleet make sure they run when we need them mr kasner i believe i saw one of the exhibits that you gave us there was a a price per mile for each bus what what it cost to run the bus for each mile that it ran do you have those that you could possibly show us because i remember thinking wow that is an outstanding dollar amount per mile for each bus uh yeah let me i can share my screen here let me find that chart and if you can explain exactly what that means uh are you able to see this clearly enough it's a little small but we can see it um so uh this was we were trying to calculate the for the 21 spare buses the uh the mileage you know from uh 2018 uh through may of 2021 to kind of compare the dollars that were being spent for the repair and maintenance and then uh you know correlate that to the the mileage you know the usage for the for some of these spare buses and so you know i guess what we were showing in this chart um and you know some of the buses um you know there were i think what we saw from our review in general that on average it was about 12 000 uh miles a year for you know the active fleet um so some of the buses were used uh you know there were some that had little usage and i know there is you know the special education buses um you know there may be you know reasons why those are not being utilized that are uh you know but they need to remain in the fleet um but in this column right here so this this column is the the miles from uh september 2018 which was the last mileage report that we were able to locate uh you can you know minus or i guess may 21 minus september 2018 and the mileage over that two and a half year period and then this column represents the the dollars the repair costs and and just the repair costs uh you know paid to mbtr because potentially there could be other uh vendors uh if they were taken to other uh you know vendors for repair so i'm sorry yeah if we're looking at this first one uh this 2004 bus uh bus number 60 formerly bus seven i guess what it would show is 72 miles over the two and a half year period with repair costs of sixteen thousand nine hundred and sixteen dollars and then you know then we calculate you know just from a kind of a metric standpoint the repair cost per mile being 236. no i'm not a mechanic but i'm pretty sure that 72 miles doesn't cost me 16 dollars of repair costs at two hundred and thirty six dollars a mile for a bus to run it just doesn't make sense uh 57 miles on the second bus and it cost twelve thousand seven hundred dollars to fix it so it cost us 225 dollars per mile when that bus moved it doesn't make sense mr kasner do you do you show if these repairs were ongoing or was it just an initial to get it up to speed um in regards to when they were classified as a spare bus um yeah so in we have an appendix that has a dashboard for each of the 21 spare buses that itemizes what the repair costs are and so i can pull up one of these if we want to look at it it's probably going to be small um but i can at least um see if there's the looks like it's appendix 11 to report to is uh has that detailed analysis for for each of the 21 spare buses and so that would contain kind of the itemized uh invoice repairs uh for the make up you know these uh dollar amounts in this table i have a question when you guys get those i'm sorry go ahead hold on no go ahead man i was just going to ask can you get those requests for the pos do they do they uh have what exactly is going to be fixed in the amount yes ma'am we have all that data okay so you guys knew what was being fixed for sixteen thousand dollars yes there all that data exists so i can have the director uh once we take a look at this we can have the director compile a report and send it to y'all and let you all know what exactly was done uh to these units but let me i guess let me piggyback off of what jackie's asking because there was a percentage there where there was no purchase purchase orders pos for some of these uh jobs that were done here weren't there there was the emergency purchase period after the the flood in june of 2018 where the uh yeah the board authorized uh you know that for timely and expediency of getting the buses back up and running that the purchase orders were not required for um one of one of the areas where we saw that was with the repairs for the buses and i think there was some facility uh repairs from the damage that also there were some expenditures there under that emergency purchase authorization okay i had a question sir but it involves report number one um for travis and travis when we talk about micromanagement in the i know you had your summary but in the report itself it states there that there's there there's evidence of and i know you had witness uh responses those are in the appendages and whatnot and you had statements from people that you interviewed current employees past employees and and their statements of micromanagement and then we also provided the timeline of the human resources director the ex-human resource director at the time and and how they got hired in the process of the fact that they didn't have the qualifications experience compared to the majority of the people that they uh that they applied against and they competed for that position but one of my uh one of my questions is is out of those statements um do you feel from your investigation that there was a manipulation of the hiring process um throughout those throughout those years uh and and with that department and the leadership that was there at the department is that is that what you have and as far as all the the responses from staff the there's micromanagement like the definition of micromanagement that's my question do you think that the board was micromanaging the hiring process from what the evidence that you saw in the responses that you received so i think what i would say was what we said in the report that there was a pattern of micromanagement where candidates who were evaluated and recommended by the interviewing committee where they had a process for you know the applications and the job postings and the interviews and the interview committee was established in a evaluation process that was uh conducted and concluding to recommend a candidate um you know to the hr department uh and then you know the superintendent and ultimately the board that the candidate that the campus recommends that when you know we see instances where they're uh not approved for various reasons and different points in the process um especially when it appears to be that they are the uh most qualified candidate you know and or the candidate that the campus feels is the best fit for their campus um then i think some of the instances we highlighted would um you know would be could fall under that category of you know some micromanagement you know because the concerns and the reason of the audit which like i said i i defend the audit i think it's a great tool i think it gives you a baseline on currently where you're at in your district you're doing the self-evaluation the good and the bad i think it's a great investment especially for a district of our size that's 200 plus million per year there is no re teachers paraprofessionals staff within departments they all get evaluated district level staff uh evaluate amongst their their department by the superintendent but more importantly the board and and i think that this is a great tool that evaluates also the board to see how effective it was to see if they truly had the best interest of the students at mine and and that's why i think that this should be done every six every six year i think that there should be a forensic got it and i think it should be done because it's a very resourceful tool like i said to self uh to self evaluate and two as a deterrent for any type of corruption any type of what they would like to call here in the valley compadrismo and things of that nature so so this is a very very important tool i can go down a laundry list of other items that we i feel that we've over over spent on in the past years even using even using a construction uh powerpoint presentation that was given a few years back we spent a lot of money sometimes in certain areas that we shouldn't have but i think this is a very valuable tool for the taxpayers because it highlights the fact there's always been a stigma in westico and that is that you have to know somebody to get in and this currently shows that there are so many people involved including our board that should have known better when that human resources director was hired that they weren't qualified and if you look at the list and it's in the report of the people that they interviewed against there was no doubt in anyone's mind you that you had to be completely unqualified as a board member or an administrator at the time to say this individual beats out these other 12. that's a fact because those other individuals had experience those other people those other individuals had their degrees and they had everything in place and it's in the report it's it's cl it's there clearly shows and that right there is a failure not only in governance but also it not only in governance but management and and that's what and that's why uh report number one there's consistent evidence that you see where policy procedures weren't followed of course like you said in the report there's a manipulation of the hiring process not only in in in the boardroom not not only in the in the executive but even before it even got to got to the board there's examples of that and that's why that's why we're deciding and we're pushing and you'll see that in the upcoming agenda trustees are saying we need to take minutes in executive also we need to actually do recordings that's what that's what one of the three trustees brought up and it's a great idea and it's allowed because we have to be as transparent as possible and then we also have to be accountable because who by the time you see here when you look in the valley and you look at the news board members board members are held accountable when it's too late and so this type of report keeps everybody in check it allows them to realize hey somebody's gonna evaluate me five years down the line and then what you see here is you see things when you look at this report there's so much in there i know that due to time you know you kept it short because if not we would be here a lot longer but if you go read report number one you see not only but job descriptions were being tailored modified you see the fact that people's uh recommendations were being modified before they got back you saw that we have gas stipends we have guys stop-ins that are six thousand dollars a year i asked in one of the previous board meetings i asked the the administration at the time i said what are these gas stipends for i thought that they until maybe trips to san antonio maybe trips to houston no they said this just to get to work and to drive around the the school system here we're not houston we're not dallas it doesn't take 40 minutes to get to a campus i'm sorry there's no way that you're spending 125 a week in fuel because if you're doing that you're probably not doing your job you're spending too much time in your car i know firsthand because i also i put a lot of bowels in outside of my work and i don't i don't go through two gallons of gas there's no and so six thousand dollars a year nobody else gets that and i do and i do want to have our current interim superintendent to see and show me another district in the valley that gives their employ their executive level team six thousand dollars mind you that out of the list of people that are getting six thousand dollars some of them are desk office jobs so they never leave the building they're not required to so there's a lot of evaluation that we need to go back our extra duty pay as well one of the appendixes we are spending considerable amounts on duty and extra duty pay and there's question there's questions on there and i know i call i even i even call to verify with you because i don't like to come out here and and talk about things unless i've been they've been verified and i asked you under extra duty paid there's certain individuals there with 50 in the 50 000 40 000 range 30 you know 50 40 000 that's kind of high i understand 20 030 maybe because the coaches and the large stipends that we have but some of the individuals we're not coaches and they're and they're still in the 40 50 000 range and you stated that you contacted the district to verify and said that that's how that's recorded in in in i think our pm system for those expenses we look at the just the in the report too you see that there is there is no you stated and these are the words in the report no justification for reclassification of positions people went from director to executive executive director and they saw in one in in certain years and it was just about a very small time frame that this happened it was concerns from the community concerns from staff they felt it was unfair because they didn't see they didn't receive the pay raise that these individuals did i for one thought that it was not true i thought this is probably an accusation that doesn't have any merit turns out in the report that it's true you have a laundry list of individuals they got reclassified their titles no justification whatsoever because duties remain the same but they saw 25.4 percent increase from midpoint 22.9 increase from midpoint 11.4 percent increase from midpoint those are massive raises and then and in the report it says it's completely unjustified there's no justification for them there was no response but it was allowed and it was approved and the multiple people were involved with that as well and if i may actually even when people went to a lower right class they were kept at the same salary and not demoted that's another thing pay skills some pay skills when you look at them people are demoted but they're allowed to keep their salary imagine that there's no other job that i think that you can find you're gonna and you know in the public that you're gonna find that where people are actually demoted move to a lower position but yet they're allowed to keep their their pay that they were receiving for with the additional higher level duties that they had before uh you see that in the report there's emails there's statements there's all types of there's all types of things that come into play but the most disturbing one is of course like i said our pay structure and salary were were people getting the proper raises all this additional work now we have to do because at the at the beginning we had a department that wasn't running effectively and now now we have to go back invest all this manpower and all this time you see people with these raises i mean when we have our professionality staff when they see a three percent raise they're looking at cents they're looking at somebody's making 12 dollars they're making maybe going up 36 cents you compare that to somebody who has a professional salary at maybe 80 90 000 at the time and they go up 25.4 percent that's massive that's thousands nobody else saw that and that's the unfairness and that's the was the concerns from the staff and and the community as well because our staff they are community members we've gotten to a point in this district because of the micro management and the fear tactics and the chokehold that was on the district at the time the staff became an id number and that's how they felt a lot of them felt that way they were just another id number that they didn't have a say they couldn't talk they couldn't discuss that was a major issue and they and this this was all true they talked about this these things were things that people brought up i didn't think there was a six thousand dollar gas type and lo and behold i didn't think that those reclassifications lo and behold people were people get started on pay skills at the highest at the highest level they don't start at the low end of their pay skill they start at the mid or even higher and that was happening even while we were sitting here i know because like we questioned some positions and i and i said this person doesn't have experience of what not how are they making so much and they looked at it and they said well that's a pay scale i said no it's not i said there's no way that that individual has enough weight what they call weight because of your qualifications experienced in the past that they're starting at that amount or something's wrong with the way we're paying people because we're paying way too much and that kind of leads to our you know our financial issues but sure and behold when they came back and they checked they were at the maximum of the pay scale that individual they hadn't even worked in the district and they're already coming in at the max of the of that a lot of pay scale so there's a lot that we have to evaluate and how things are done because there is some unfairness and there's things that we do have to check and that's one of the main concerns that i had with this reporting report one is the fact that this was this was from the beginning planned implemented you see the timeline just like you said yourself uh mr uh mr casper in your report you said that in in january that we had an opening but yet we didn't decide to fill it until september and when we did we went ahead and we went with the lower position instead of going to the director we went with the assistant for hr and then lo and behold after some cases like noted in the report now once the individual met the minimum of the minimum qualifications then they got hired as director and you see somebody jump up from the forty thousand dollar range all the way to a hundred and one thousand plus a six thousand dollar gas typing meanwhile we have teachers pay skills that move hardly a fraction over years there's teachers in our classroom teachers are numb and i and i i work in the school system and i know everybody's important i'm a supplemental employee my my position in the school system is to supplement the campuses and supplement the instruction everyone does not actually in the classroom is a supplemental employee except for the principal of the campus which is actually the management the the administrator but we are our team and we supplement that classroom and yet our teachers and our instructional paraprofessionals and everybody else their pay if you look at it compared to what we were seeing here at the executive level was moving at a fraction at a snail pace but everybody else was just skyrocketing and as far as at the executive level and and there's no answer for it we've been here for months we've been asking and there's no answer for it there's no answer how somebody can come right off right off uh you know graduating from high school with just a couple years out of high school and they're already in the 70 000 range and yet we have teachers that'll work countlessly for decades 10 20 30 years and they'll never see that pay so we got big problems we got we got to reevaluate everything and we have to go back and look because there has been mismanagement because the board is too involved at some point in the timeline of our school district the board was just implemented too much and and i and i saw it firsthand that's why i stopped going to stop asking for committee meetings and start and i stopped participating because we weren't listening we were participating and that's wrong administration they need to they need to really get with the program and you need to come already with with the initiatives that you want the board the board doesn't know more than you they're not qualified and experienced to make the decisions for the administration because they're not there day-to-day and that's why i keep voicing that that we have to remove the board from day-to-day operations and keep it at policy and governance only there is no way that that there's a board member even with even working in the educational field or whether you're a principal or even the next superintendent that you can override and supersede the recommendation from administration because they're actually there they're on the ground on day to day and they know what they need they know the culture and climate for their departments and their campuses so the committees that was one thing that i had mentioned also that i did i wanted to end because financial it seemed like every single major component was broken down to committee and then board members from previous boards were all split up into these categories whether it was finance curriculum uh construction especially et cetera and some of those recommendations and influences were costly and realistically like i said uh as a board member and part of a board and also working with an educational setting it's just it's just i've never seen that before even where i've worked i've never seen anything like this where you've seen the board so involved in the day-to-day operations and making recommendations and whatnot so so that's what we have to do here we have to look at who we're bringing in look at the history and this is to voters now i'm speaking to voters and also staff like i said they did feel that way they did they there was a large concern about political influence there's a large concern of people being uh politically attacked if they were to speak up and you see that the situation was put into place where there was there was micromanagement and there was control and what does that lead to voter oppression because you're you're are putting fear into the staff so they can't go out there and recruit they can't go out there and talk about the issues just like everyone else can they can't have tournaments and and whatnot because they're they're oppressed and because they can't speak up and that's one of the things that i saw here is we need to let our staff know that they're more powerful than anything else they're not just employee id numbers i'm going to go back to that they are parents they're taxpayers and they're voters so they're more powerful than they know because if they need to step up also and also voters we all do i'm guilty of it too i'm par i'm party the ownership of this report because over the past years i did input the work i didn't step up to the plate and and and we have to do that we have to look at and vet who's running for school board i understand a lot of people say well it's just a school board position it's not important no it is you're it's one of the largest employees largest employers in our city it's over 200 plus million dollars of your taxpayer dollars and more importantly there's two things that parents care about the most and i don't want to speak for everyone but i'm pretty sure i'm right is that we care about the health of our children and the education of our children so we need to step up and we need to participate in the election process because this type of micromanagement and this type of these type of things that are in place in report number one and these negative actions that's because we did not vet properly the people that are running we need to make sure that they sell themselves we need to make sure that they they sell themselves why they belong on the board the days of just putting your name really big on on a sign or your face really big on the side those are over you need to sell yourself now people want to know who's actually running who's going to represent me on the board who's going to manage these funds that belong to my kids these funds belong to our these funds belong to every single student in our school district and our job is to make sure that not even a dollar slips through our fingers because every time we do that's a dollar that we lose in the classroom and that's where our focus should be and and it's our responsibility as voters to look at this report look at it and see what was happening how many people were victims in this report this happened a lot and i can tell you why because i've had improv conversations with with some people and and you'll be surprised at how many people have actually told me that they've gone through this through this process or this situation where they went they interviewed they're ranked number one and yet they didn't make it to the board somehow they fell through i talked to an individual and i'm not going to say this because he was a client of mine and he and and he discussed to me that he was hired in west sequoia's dean i told him why are you driving all the way to mission and he says oh because uh because i had never got hired i got hired in west goitomi i got hired at wesleyand i got hired at a middle school for an art position and this person has awards in mission he's taken his class to to the actual washington dc and i said what happened to him and he told me just out of the blue a random individual that i'm talking to and he tells me he says he he applied for a fine arts position in 2019 1819 school year at one of our middle schools he got hired he was recommended number one he was told by the principal and i give that principle credit he was told by the principle that he was recommended but yet he was called back two days later and told that he's not going to the board because he's not going to go he's not going to be nominated because the board wanted to go in a different direction and that's what this principal told this individual and i and i'm gr and i was grateful that the principal actually called him back and told him the truth but like i said this has happened for years our community knows it our staff knows it everybody knew it and as much as i tried to be optimistic and hoping that it wasn't the truth it was mark if i may add um one of our other board members obviously they're not here i don't know but uh there's another one that went on record and onto a newspaper article said i don't know what i'm not aware of anything wrong going on when we have had these talks and these meetings about things like this before and that is the frustration that we face to have the no there's nothing wrong i don't see anything i don't know what you're talking about it's in black and white the numbers in front of us but there's nothing wrong with them that is very frustrating to sit here and try and you see what needs to be fixed but there's too many obstacles to get to to get to get over to fix them i remember i asked mr uh castner at the very beginning of our uh forensic audit i said do you guys usually suspend people while the investigation is going on and he said no usually they're already they've already been suspended they get to us the audit after a suspension so that we can investigate what exactly happened but of course in wesley close sometimes unfortunately it doesn't work the way other people do you know we we know what's going on but we don't act or we don't move on things because this person doesn't want me to or i don't i can't because i'm going to get him him or her in trouble or there's always some kind of obstacle even though we know when we see what's wrong there's always a denial of no no no leave it alone just turn away don't pay attention to it i know there's instances here and are a district employees have told me i was suspended they suspended me because they were going to investigate well how come we can do that to our employees who are you know at the lower levels but here when we know things are going on we didn't suspend any of our the people that were under investigation now imagine if you would have turned the tables a lot of people would have been very unhappy if you would have said you're suspended during this investigation during this point i got it and you are and you are too because we've had this information for a long time you guys are seeing it for the very first time today we've already had it for a couple of months and it's very frustrating that when we want to see something happen you want to fix things they don't get fixed and that's the frustration that we're facing right now and when when i when i'm seeing these interview committees and these high level positions highly sought positions and i see these interviews going on by people who you just have a lack of confidence in because of everything you're reading it's kind of hard to trust with the system and the process so we're it's frustrating and we're going to try to do our best to fix what we can with everybody's helping santos said the voters mr kaz mr kasner and his audit team did a great job and the interim is here in our the board we're going to work together to try to fix what we have to but we have to work as a team together one of the major factors like and i know we talked about that is how do we make sure that the hiring process is as valid as possible without any type of influence from the outside of the school district or even from within and one of the things that we had brought up before was moving into a new system where where there's hr systems that you can implement software where people are applying online uploading their information and as soon as it's posted the director or the campus administrator gets a code a username and a password and they can log in and they're seen in real time every single person that's applying in real time they're getting their application they're seeing the process once all the once once the window is closed for all applicants they already know that there was 18 applicants hr does its process on betting to make sure that all the requirements are there all the documentation is there and then once that is done those individuals are then highlighted that they're they're they're available to be interviewed and called in and at that time the administrator if he wants to he may have liked somebody that wasn't highlighted then they can check and ask okay why wasn't this person identified and they can say well they're missing this document this document whatever the case may be and we can have follow through because we have a lot of people slip through the cracks we have a lot of people that are highly qualified that never get to the table and and that's a fact dr vallis let me ask you let me clean really quickly a lot of the public i guess the perception seems to be the board hires the people the board hires people we don't hire people can you explain to the public who's who's listening how does how does a candidate who gets interviewed get a job at west coast the only individual you hire as a board is a superintendent that's it in wasukel right now we are implementing systems when it comes to hr as far as the screening process because you have to have that vetted you have to review all the the the applicants right so we do have a system right now in place that's that is pretty transparent not as transparent as mr de los santos is describing but uh the goal is to get to that point but right now what we do is um we have hr personnel they'll scream they don't do the official screening it's upper leadership executive leadership that will sit in that interview committee uh be part of the screening and what happens is so we get a list of the applicants from hr hr will will note all the qualifications that individual has whether they met the qualifications for the job the years of experience needed and so forth the composition of the committees is has changed extremely if you note in the or you reference the reports most of the committees only consisted of two or three people yes ma'am two to three now we are now the compensation composition of the committees include and that's done through executive leadership whether it's mr aguilar myself um others on that serve on cabinet um are doing it right now just to make sure that the the process is fair and just for all who apply and so um we uh so we do the screening and then we do the we the composition of the committees now we include like nine ten or eleven individuals it's no longer just two or three and and so we the feedback we're getting from candidates so i've been here for five or six weeks and we've implemented that process and then the signing of the confidentiality uh document form which is also noted in the um the report the forensic audit report has been implemented as well as far as confidentiality when you serve on an interviewing committee so it's a it's a process that is now i firmly believe of course we have to enhance it right and refine it from the actual applica applying process to the actual interviewing right and and the recommendations but but um we do we we closely analyze the composition of the the um the committees the interviewing committees but that's for district level positions now at the campus level um that's different and and i know that we do have to provide some professional learning sessions or pd on replicating what we're doing here at the campus level but for the district level positions um the candidates have been expressing how they the process is changing and and they appreciate the fact that we're uh gosh it's it's moving in in a different direction as far they see it as fair they see it as it's it's a just system um also the recommendations anything that we that that since i came on board as your interim i've honored the top candidate of the interviewing committee for the district level right that i'm bringing forth to you so i honor and i respect the committee's decision i do provide a final interview one interview one-on-one with me just for uh if it's a campus principle if it's a director position it's for the fit for me to get a feel and an understanding of that employee and and um and you know to know that yes what we're bringing forth to what i am bringing forth to you and the interviewing committee is a top pick right so the board is okay we've already enhanced the systems but we still have a lot of work to do in hr you know dr valdez one of the things that you know you hit around you you brought up a good point is that the largest expenditure that we have here in the district is our staff and that's how we that's how we create that quality product that we have which is academic excellence in the classroom is by putting highly qualified individuals in front of our students or working indirectly with them as well and so what i like with report number one the processes that are going to place yes they're very effective i'm very glad because if you look at the report you'd see you see only two to three individuals doing the hiring or involved in those committees and it's there if you go back and look it's consistent to as far as the individuals involved when these decisions were being made and now you have those double digits involved where you have nine to ten people involved and that increases the validity of the process because what's very important about reading um investigation number one is the fact that one of the most critical things we have in our lives was taken away from our employees and that's opportunity everyone everyone looks for an opportunity no matter where you work or what you do we always look for that opportunity or we pray for or we hope for it and in this situation you're seeing that because of private interests but whether political private interest groups from outside the district or whatever the case may be you saw that that was taken away from individuals there was individuals going to interviews and i know because i've known i know a lot of staff that work in the district and they were going knowing that they were going for practice they would say it because they knew they didn't get the call they already didn't get the notification that they were the ones that were going to be number one before the interview process and that that right there it truly is is sad and it's heartbreaking to read because no one is allowed to take a god-given right and that's opportunity we tell our kids all the time work hard in school learn etc go to college then come for your interview or you know doors will open for you and here we had people that were trusted by the community they were put into positions to oversee and and implement policy and they and they violated it and they took people's opportunities away for their own political interest whether voter harvesting or whatever the case may be and that was taken away from them and that's that's what bothers me the most out of report number one because nobody should do that to anyone else and nobody should get ready one morning and go to an interview knowing in the knowing that they're not going to get hired that they're just going for practice and so i'm glad that this report was done i'm glad that you're taking proper steps to to increase the validity of the hiring process and that way everybody here in wesley isd knows that they have a fair opportunity and that way also our parents know as well too that we're putting the best highly qualified individuals in the place uh so their child can be successful so thank you ma'am thank you and just recently you know with some of the positions that were open you know i did tell uh candidates you do not meet the qualifications and and you know we'll will stand firm in in that conviction of if you do not meet the qualifications for a position you will not be granted an interview and you will not move forward in the process yeah it's about communication they want to know why didn't i get i get so many calls why didn't they interview me if it was a simple like we talked about simply this is why you don't have the qualification oh okay but if you don't tell somebody well it's because they know this person or they know that person or that's friends over here and that's how it starts we just need to work on the communication definitely and like mark said the accountability there's no accountability for school board members or or yet the kids they have their their start test to pass the teachers have the t test the principals have the i don't know what it's called p something the superintendent has revaluation given by the board what about the board members who's going to hold us accountable we have told each other accountable i don't know what we have to do but it's am i upset that the other ones aren't here yes i i am a little upset but you know what maybe they have things to do that's fine it's okay but attendance has a lot to do with how dedicated you are if you're if you're gonna serve your community you have to know you have to not just show up and be given it i remember one board member before said when we got uh onto the board for yeah that person said you guys made my job so easy i just come and sit and approve what you gave me and i just my mouth dropped what what do you mean you have to come in with your research done you have to plan be accountable because all these things that are happening comes back on us everything starts here it's a ripple effect all the decisions made here are a ripple effect into everywhere else so we need to be held accountable definitely for our decisions go ahead go ahead coach i'm just going to pick it back on on i know what mark said a little earlier ago and to me it it it's going to take time to get there i know we you know i it was funny the other day somebody told me hey you guys are being criticized for for micromanaging you know and i was like okay year after year you know you you see the the recommendations by the committees during the you in the public eye will shortly uh hopefully we can put this online here very quickly we'll see that there was constant manipulation with job descriptions with with with uh with board members denying changing hr director changing the people you know there was a lot of manipulating going on and for people to say for individuals to say hey well you guys are doing the same thing now you guys we're not hiring anybody and the only recommendations we're making now are for highly qualified people we're not asking anybody hey let's change their job description hey let's take away masters hey let's take away let's do a teaching certificate preferred instead of mandatory that's the stuff that was happening and that's the stuff that's going to take some time to correct because there is a distrust at all i mean i'm going to call it what it is and i'm in and i'm right here to the people's faces to our employees faces there is a distrust on my behalf i can't speak for the rest of the board on my behalf there is because of the stuff that we allow to continue to happen year in and year out example after example reading this through the first time i in june when we got this or july when we got this it was just jaw dropping i couldn't believe what we were reading it was rumors everybody thought it was rumors but no it's true it's all in this report and how are we really going to hold each other accountable we're going to hold our superintendent right now accountable and she needs to hold everybody else to the highest accountability because there hasn't been any accountability there hasn't and it to me uh on opposite of what mark to me it's going to take a little bit of time and we are going to not micromanage but we're going to dig and make sure that we are getting the best qualified person for those jobs with experience hopefully not just okay well the only three apply and you know we've altered uh qualifications for jobs and i still feel that we're still doing it at times and i know it's going to get better and it will get better doctor you're under your direction right now but it's going to take some time this is years and years and years of of manipulation that's been going on that's going to take some time to fix so i don't want to sit here and be blindsided or or hey we're bringing this person to the border or whatever with doubt in my mind i want to make sure we are hiring the best person and right now there is a big distrust on my part because of this report right here so i just want to say a few few words you know i you know i've been on the board since 2017. you know you know i've been accused here of uh micromanaging breaking policy not doing my job as a board member you know because i'm i'm part of that you know board from 2017. you know i can tell you if if this is what you know it's called micromanaging where you know the board didn't approve one position in 2019 one position in 2018 i i remember those incidents and i remember there's backstories to those but i'm not going to get into that right now because it's personnel matters but just like mr los santos said earlier you know if that's considered micromanagement we as a current board right now are micromanaging because we've had probably about eight nine ten positions that we have been brought to us and we've sent them back so if you want to call it what it is call it what it is you know but if you know i challenge all of us to trust dr valdez trust our administration and i know you know there's some mistrust out there but you know we're going to take this report we're going to take this audit and get the recommendations from mr kasner and his team and move forward you know call me naive call me gullible call me what you want to call me but i feel we still have a lot of good people working in this district a lot of good people that have a the interest the best interest you know in in in mind so i don't want this to tarnish everybody we have a lot of good employees just like we're anywhere there's room for improvement and that's what we're going to take this report and we're going to improve but to you know act like the sky is falling and and we're a horrible district and what's the question you know it is not the right choice that's wrong to me that's wrong my my three children graduated from here i graduated from from here from westico isd and i would still vouch for this district so you know i i can personally i can't speak for any other board member in the past you know i'm the only one that's here that was part of that and you know it's it's something that i felt like i had to be here for that and you know i i can guarantee you that if we're all on board with this we're gonna you know just like what mr de los santos said we're getting we as a board member trustee need to realize what our role is and our role is to hire the superintendent and let her run the school district and we need to trust in her and her team and i and i vouch and i promise you that that's what i'm gonna do and that's what i've been doing so that's just my challenge you know to all of us uh to move forward to move forward you know and learn from this make us better but let's move forward you know we're losing sight you know let's let's go let's get back to it you know to the kids to education and learn from from this report so i want to thank all all of our employees you know for all the hard work that you do every day day in day out especially during these times with the pandemic it's not easy i know it's that easy you know and you know i i thank you for for all the hard work you all have done you have my trust you have my confidence you know uh one of the things that you thank you dr rodriguez for making that statement and one of the things i wanted to point out like i said from the beginning and i said that in in my review of report number two and the reaper now will report number one is that our district has always no matter who sits in that seat or who sits in ours our district has always had a culture of excellence if you look at our scores and our performance we've always led the way it's only until recently that maybe we started you know uh falling a little bit back but we've always led the way in innovation and services and academics if you look at our scores and you compare them even to our biggest competition within our city limits if you compare population to population you'll see that we're not we're second to none we've always been high performing and and so and that's why i said earlier that i wanted to thank the campus admin and staff and and supplemental staff because even regardless of what's going on with the board even regardless of what's going on at the district or executive level they've always been successful and they've always been able to deliver high academic pro uh high successful academic products which is our students being ready for that post-secondary education or the workforce and so i do commend them and i thank them because regardless of the fact they've never been they've never been faced by this and our campus administrations too yeah there are instances where maybe there was there is interest is where there was micromanagement and whatnot or that was involvement or even at the department decision level process i saw it firsthand myself i was in the committees tell me it's not it's just too much and so by removing the board out of the day-to-day operations and letting that be known we're just going to continue to excel and improve on what we currently have so dr rodriguez is right i do thank all of our staff because they've always been highly productive and they've always delivered that product but now it's our responsibility though though as board members to really identify what's really truly there what's in the report and and and what also what our staff was saying in state report one and two there are issues that we need to fix uh coach armando jr he can't be here today but i want to thank him and and i hope he has a quick strong recovery but he was he was also a pro he was also a vital component in this and this audit happened and i i did want to mention him because i know he's not here today so i didn't want to mention that he couldn't be here and if he could he would because he was on the board himself he can't speak today he's not here but he was on the board himself and he was a strong proponent of this audit he was one of the votes that probably carried it uh carried it through and made it possible as well to bring it to the table and so i want to thank him for that because i know that was mentioned that some members weren't here but him in particular he he couldn't be here and if he could he probably would um but this report is what it is and like you said you're right we are going to build off on this we don't have a bad district at all we're second to none you know i wear it on my chest and i don't put it on there lightly just because i'm here i put it because i believe in it my kids come to this district as well too and they've always been highly successful okay and so and that's what i want to tell to parents too that may be watching this or hear about our forensic audit that these issues are very simple to fix and as far as governance as well as long as we as long as we know what our roles are and we stay out of out of the day-to-day operations we stop direct uh contacting directly campus principals and directors nobody should be calling them board members should only talk to one person and doctor about this is right and that's her that's it you have a concern you call her the superintendent decides whether when she's going to take care of the issue and how she's going to take care of the issue and then she gets back to you and that's something we need to look forward to as far as putting into policy as well that administration knows very well not to be dealing outside outside of the boardroom or outside of dr valdez or whoever ends up being our superintendent out of out of their management because that's a critical factor i've worked in the school district for 16 years i've never once got a call from a board member never and and never and i and i had millions of dollars that had to manage and and many many staff that i had to hire extra duty pay etc salaries and whatnot i said and i never got influenced once not once did i have a phone call or did i ever speak to a board member in 16 years but yet here we do have that issue and here we and it's a fact we know it administration knows it and staff knows it those are the things we just need to end the board's not here to you're right the board's not here to manage the district she is and and all the staff under under dr valdez that's what the taxpayers are paying and that's who's in charge and we need just to keep it that way and once we see that you're going to see that we're going to be even more productive than we really are so you know i agree with you sir mr kessner i know this question has been asked you know by many and you know can you just give us um what the cost of this audit um turned out to be do you have an idea do you have that number um i think the last invoice we i think we've submitted seven invoices since february i think we're um and i think we crossed over the 300 000 maybe 325 325 000 um give or take is there any more invoices um that are coming our way uh just the the final invoice for um september i guess through yeah for september yeah and and those are the things that we knew coming into it could we spend about 50 to 60 000 on the yearly audit and this this audit went back over five years and like i said it is costly for a district card size that's the average expense we can go back and look at construction projects all day long and look at the prices that we paid for that 379 thousands of pavilions or whatever the case may be or t-shirts there's a lot of examples awards and t-shirts and we can add up the total so yes it was a cost but it's something that needs to be done and i think it needs to be done every six years if i were to if i were to decide to run again i would i would totally push for a forensic audit and i would love to see what it is and if it came back like that you can guarantee that i wouldn't be here in this seat i would have enough self-respect that i would step down because the staff knows exactly what's been going on and so does the community so regardless we can say whatever we want to say here but facts are facts and that's the truth there what has been micro management we have to accept we're never going to build and grow unless we do and as taxpayers voters and parents we need to be more involved and vet our school board members and see if they're qualified and experienced to sit on the board of 200 plus million dollars because if not we'll see another report like this and because politics is alive and well and we know that and it's rampant but we need to we need to keep it away from our school systems and we need to keep it out of our classrooms i think this is money's well spent and when we can sit there and set aside 500 000 for t-shirts and awards and so forth we can definitely and this is an investment because this is going to help us clean up what's broken so there's there's uh i think there's no price enough to fit correct what what needs to be corrected here thank you mr gesner i definitely agree you know we're definitely gonna you know take your recommendations and and move forward and make our district better you know and that's that's what this was part of uh uh you know with this audit so thank you for all your your work i appreciate you know you know the the information you provided yeah thank you and you know one thing i did want to say is um you know based on the nature of these types of investigations you know we're typically looking at the areas that are the highest concern and where there may be you know potential issues and so uh certainly uh you know we would love to highlight the areas where the district is excelling and you know that's not really the the the nature of these types of reviews so i know they they may come off as being one-sided and telling you know only part of the story because that's really the way they're designed is to find areas to improve so you know certainly um you know i always take that into account when uh you know these appear to be you know all negative reports but it is you know only part of the the picture for an organization sounds good thank you sir thank you and if i made vice president dr rodriguez i'll tell the rest of the story [Laughter] the rest of the story is that the majority if not most wasco isd faculty staff administration whether it's campus level or district level are exemplary employees you know team wisd and the success of our students of our boys and girls academic athletic and fine arts and uil academics would not be where it's at had it not been for an excellent team it's the action of a few that got us here and so now we close the chapter we close that chapter and as your interim superintendent and as the executive team sitting here in the audience to all of those watching remotely those here in the audience wesico isd pledges to move forward we face forward we don't look back we face forward as team wisd and we collectively as a team commit to working with transparency and honesty our hope is that the publication of the report findings is a step in refining our district systems by enhancing processes and procedures and that work has already begun and the public will be able to view the reports on our website we will also institute and enforce proper internal controls to prevent any future issues as noted in the findings we're focused on building a brighter future because it's already bright we just didn't tell that story today but we will create a and build a brighter future for west coast in reestablishing the trust and the confidence within those specific district departments referenced in the report and not only those departments but we will work with transparency honesty and fairness throughout the entire district that's my expectation i know that's what everybody expects of me as the interim superintendent as your leader but i expect that of every single teammate in wasco isd because that's that's wasco isd that's the wasco way and we don't and i don't expect anything less than that thank you [Applause] thank you dr burlesque so with that i'll move over to item six a german can you announce the date of the publication oh the date we will post carlos martinez we will post the publication tonight it'll be under the superintendent slash board tab on the district website home page and then it'll take you there to the the forensic audit report button so we'll be on our district website tonight all right um item six uh german go move 8 41. you

Channel: WeslacoISD

Views: 3,589

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Id: ve0PD_ulInk

Length: 198min 35sec (11915 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021