Lancaster ISD in BIG trouble with TEA

Anytime the Texas Education Agency talks about appointing a conservator, you’re in trouble.

Anytime you get per diem meal allowances and still apparently bill meals to a credit card, you’re inviting trouble.

Anytime you spend nearly $600 at Pappadeaux for a Martin Luther King Jr. dinner for less than 30 people ($55 a pop, roughly), you’re inviting trouble from your own taxpayers; the heck with TEA.

And, it seems awfully strange for Superintendent Larry Lewis to claim this “vindicates” the school district.

Details in the 291-page PDF of the TEA audit findings. (The portions after page 64 are basically skippable.)
• Not in compliance with IRS travel reimbursement regs, page 8;
• Unallowable travel per diem when paid from a state or federal grant, page 9;
• Per diem/credit card “double dipping,” page 9;
• MLK dinner at Pappadeaux, page 11;
• Other credit card dining, with unnamed city of Lancaster staff as well, page 11ff;
• Counting graduated seniors as attending school after the date of graduation, page 13;

Also, whether ethical or not, or legal or not, a number of the credit card bills, as I had heard off the record in the past, are related to the International Baccalaureate program.

As for the Pappadeaux dinner, the current LISD administration could have talked to the “other lens” called King Myrick before he moved away from Lancaster.

Now, if you had just invited Jeff Melcher there, everything would have been hunky-dory!

That said, Kathy Goolsby (or her editor), coming off as typical mainstream media, couldn’t resist taking a shot at Lancaster Today. If the Snooze would just worry about its own financial bottom line, it wouldn’t have to potshot at a school district entering into an agreement with a suburban community newspaper. (And, Today Newspapers actually has a copy of the contract, Kathy.)