State auditor offers help for schools
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State Auditor Tom Salmon |
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BY CRISTINA KUMKA Rutland Herald Staff - Published: October 26, 2009
State Auditor Tom Salmon is vowing to use a first-ever information inventory of the state's schools to help them work together and save money.
Salmon, a school teacher in Los Angeles for 10 years, and his "independent, objective" office of eight auditors and two support staff sent a survey earlier this month to the state's 62 supervisory unions to gather information on a range of services shared by schools — from food contracts to buses to autism projects.
The goal: Start a conversation on how to share services, stop duplication and cut costs based on fact rather than emotion, Salmon said.
"It's not a gotcha project, it's a help ya project," he said.
"We know that Vermont schools share information and services," Salmon wrote in an e-mail. "What we don't know is which services are shared, how often and how beneficial that data is to school officials."
Half of all the state's superintendents have already responded to the survey — due Oct. 30 — reporting what they already do and what educational tools they would be willing to share.
"We're doing what people in Vermont should have been doing a long time ago," Salmon said from his Montpelier office Friday.
"We've been involved with schools from the get-go … at trainings to tighten their business practices," he said.
"We have faith in them (superintendents) …. they are out there on the front lines."
Cost containment is one driver of the project.
The state's Joint Fiscal Office is reporting an estimated $82 million deficit in the state's General Fund in fiscal year 2011, $155 million in 2012 and about $127 million in 2013, according to information on the office's Web site and Stephen Klein, joint fiscal officer.
Some of that deficit falls on the Education Fund — with a $240 million transfer of money from the General Fund expected by 2011. But the project is about much more than money, Salmon said Friday.
"They (school leaders) will learn something about their neighbors within their geographical area or you may just find in general that some districts in Vermont are doing some creative things as far as at-risk kids or mobilizing staff with specialties," Salmon said.
And Salmon said he plans to do a comparison in the future between unified districts and non-unified districts to identify duplication in what schools offer, which Salmon calls "inefficient."
The results of the survey are expected to be posted on the auditor's Web site in November.
For more information, call the Office of the State Auditor at 828-2281.
cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com
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