How....conveeeenient.
We very quickly realized that the Orleans Parish School Board was on the verge of running out of cash and would be insolvent by September 2005 unless several immediate steps were taken. At this week"s School Board meeting, the Board approved moving forward with a $50 million financing, which will ensure the district's short-term liquidity.More about financial mess
The bad: About twenty million dollars has allegedly been stolen from the school system over the past decade. And for a system that doesn’t have enough certified teachers to go around, that is a crucial figure. (The amount missing could have paid approximately 600 annual teaching salaries.) The system is also once again on the verge of bankruptcy robbing Peter to pay Paul all at the 11th hour. Financial dire straights continually overshadow the real needs of the schools.Further down the page:
The good: Several people have been indicted in the missing money scandal and the feds are still sitting over in the Algiers office monitoring and taking notes. And New York financial turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal took over the money reins in July after being appointed by the state and after much ado, welcomed by the school board. The firm’s initial estimate is that it will take about one year to clean up the financial mess.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is in town today to speak at the Reading First National Conference. Spellings mentioned that she has will be, "watching the efforts of New York turnaround company Alvarez & Marsal to get control over New Orleans public school finances." And that her inspector general will be closely monitoring Orleans spending of federal funds, as nearly $70 million have been poorly documented in the past.