By ROBERT NERATKO and BARRY UNDERWOOD
This is an open letter to the residents of the Westfield Academy Central School District.
We have addressed you in the past on district issues which have been important to all of us, including the $2.4 million found in a New York state audit which reported that money should have been returned to the local taxpayers, the $1.5 million Capital Reserve Fund referendum which was voted down by a margin of 10 to 1, and of course most recently the Westfield-Ripley merger vote which district residents rejected. With regard to those issues we believe that a number school officials have not been totally truthful with the public.
It is now school budget time and we like many communities continue to hear the words from school superintendents that our school is on a bare-bones budget or there is nothing else we can cut.
While we believe that state school property taxes are far too high, we understand there is a price to pay for education. With this in mind we decided to review not what we were paying in taxes but instead how that money was being spent at WACS. We would like to address some of our findings with you and allow you to make your own decision on whether WACS Superintendent Mark Sissel and WACS board President Steve Zanghi are spending your hard earned money responsibly. We chose two accounts to review, and this is what we found.
1. The principal's budget for travel. The budgeted amount for this account for this school year (2008-09) was $1,850. The amount spent to date is at the $8,000 figure - and that is with three months left in the school year.
How do you budget $1,850 and spend four times that amount?
It may help you to understand that Mr. John Hamels was hired as an interim principal at a rate of $400 per day. Mr. Lawrence Studd was hired as an interim principal at a rate of $300 per day.
In addition to their daily paycheck, both Hamels and Studd were each paid mileage to travel from their home to WACS and back home. We ask you, does your employer pay you 58.5 cents per mile to travel from your house to work and then back home each day?
Do not believe that this is some sort of proper procedure for interim principals. Every contract in life is negotiated, furthermore if someone wants mileage to travel back and forth to work, hire someone from good old Westfield instead of 50 miles away!
Take this into consideration: Studd lives in Cattaraugus and his daily average round trip mileage is 100 miles. Multiply that by 58.5 cents per mile and Studd is getting $58.50 per day just to drive to WACS and then back home. If he works a five-day week that is about $300 tax-free money. Is that right? Wouldn't that money be better used for instructional purposes "for the children."
We have reviewed travel vouchers from May 2008 to March. These vouchers show Studd has received at least $6,655 for his travel. Mr. Hamel's has received over $1,248. This means that Westfield taxpayers have paid about $8,000 in the last nine months to have two principals travel from home to the school and back home. Add this to the mix, when we questioned five school board members none of them were told that Studd and Hamels received funds to drive back and forth to work each day. In fact all appeared shocked.
We wondered why school board members would be shocked at something they should know, so we looked into that matter a little further. We were told that Sissel and school board President Zanghi did not inform the other board members that these two principals would get paid to drive back and forth to work.
We were given the contract between Studd and Hamels and both were signed by Zanghi and Sissel on Oct. 10, 2008. We wondered why the contracts were signed after both principals started working and in fact Studd had been working for about six months.
It is also important to note that we were told that a board president cannot sign a contract like Studd's and Hamels' without the entire school board voting to approve or disapprove the contract. We were told no vote was held, and as we stated above it appears board members were not even told about the daily travel pay.
One more issue on this topic, on Jan. 30 and Feb. 2, Hamels submitted travel vouchers. Our review noticed that Hamels signed and certified both vouchers and Sissel approved both for payment. We noticed the $99 Hamels received on Jan. 30 was also paid again on Feb. 2. We were just verified by a school official that Hamels was indeed overpaid. Our conclusion is that Hamels and Sissel signed and certified a double payment for the same mileage. This is just plain wrong!
Do not be led to believe this is just a simple error. WACS just went through a state controller's audit last year and Zanghi and Sissel told us they would be on top of expenses!
2. Sissel's account for travel mileage. The amount budgeted for this year was $2,400. With three months left in this school year the superintendent has spent over $5,400.
We wondered how you budget $2,400 and spend 2 1/2 times that amount? So we looked a little closer and this is what we found. We reviewed 14 of Sissel's travel vouchers. All were certified to be true and signed by Sissel and approved by Zanghi.
Each travel voucher included numerous travel date entries. All were not prepared properly or accurately. Of the 14 we reviewed, 11 had no entry date at the top. They were sloppy, very difficult to read and understand. Additionally they had no mileage documentation attached as verification. We wonder if this was done to confuse anyone who tried to review the vouchers?
On the travel vouchers we could get information on, Sissel had listed 6,008 miles (this is only part of his claimed mileage). When we checked this travel mileage against the Internet Mapquest we found that the actual mileage Sissel traveled was 4.188 miles. That is an overage of 1,820 miles; at a cost of 0.585 per mile that comes to $1,064.70. We believe that is a low figure because Sissel's travel vouchers did not provide any verification and were a mess. Furthermore we did not see any attachments to verify any of his actual mileage.
Also included with the travel voucher information was a copy of a purchase voucher submitted by Sissel. It has no entry date at the top but is signed and certified by Sissel and Zanghi. This was the only voucher we saw that had receipts on it which included lunches, dinners, EZ pass and purchases from Dunkin' Donuts, Quality Markets and Wal-Mart.
Just as a side note, some of these receipts had Teacher Appreciation Week written on them; we wondered if the goodies given out during teacher appreciation week were purchased with the Superintendent's own funds or taxpayers funds. Just so everyone knows, the receipts show the taxpayers pay for teacher appreciation goodies.
Numerous items on these receipts raised issues with us including why the Superintendent was submitting receipts with sales taxes included when the school is exempt from paying sales tax. They were signed for by Sissel and approved by Zanghi. Once again this is after the audit last year in which we were informed expenses would be watched and corrective measures would be put in place.
One other item which we would like to bring to your attention is the following. On a Wal-Mart receipt with many questionable purchases we noticed an item purchase listed as "Rescue 4x4, item number 002708463235 for $21.47."
We decided to call Wal-Mart and ask them about this item. A Wal-Mart employee told us the item is a Child's Fisher-Price Fire Rescue toy. Once again, this was submitted, signed and certified by Sissel and approved for payment. The Westfield taxpayers paid for this toy? We wonder what and who it was purchased for? Hmmmm
On another issue we have been informed that Sissel has taken many days off in the past year including Fridays and Mondays. While reviewing his leave record we noticed he has only been charged for 4.5 vacation days. This is concerning to us because he is paid around $500 per day. If he is taking days off and they are not being charged, the district will have to pay him for his accumulated days when he leaves.
This would be like getting paid twice. It is interesting to note that a review of both his vacation and sick days show that most of his days were not authorized or signed by Zanghi as required.
In conclusion, we want to make the following points.
It is our opinion that the alleged issues we have raised in this letter are limited to a small number of top school officials. In speaking with staff they are doing what they are told to do by Sissel and Zanghi. Board members should have been reviewing information, however they claim they were listening to what Sissel and Zanghi were telling them.
We feel it is important for the school board to take immediate corrective action, including repayment of false claims, corrective legal action against those who mislead, filed, approved or certified false claims. The last thing we want to hear is excuses; remember we had an audit last year and we were told these types of issues would not happen again. If we do not hold the superintendent responsible for poor performance and incompetence, how can we expect to hold a student responsible for anything they do wrong?
We support the good teachers and staff that are doing a great job. While we have been critical of board members in the past we understand that there are a few board members who are trying to do a difficult job while being mislead by top school officials. We understand no board member can know everything, but those school board members who were aware of wrongdoing, or had hidden agendas or those who are now unwilling to take strong corrective action need to step down from the school board immediately.
We think passage of the budget is the right thing to do, and we hope you vote to approve it. However, after the budget vote WACS board members need to address what we have raised as well as all other administrative and budget issues, questions and problems. The WACS board can no longer look the other way or say they are unaware of wrongdoing. Strong corrective action including discipline is required.
Robert E. Neratko and Barry Underwood are Westfield residents.
