Superintendent Says ACPS Is Improving Despite Recent Budget Flap

The superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools agrees that the system’s management of its Capital Improvement Program but said the unfortunate actions of two senior level employees should not overshadow strong progress overall.

Two employees in the Facilities Department “took behaviors upon themselves that were absolutely wrong,” Superintendent Mort Sherman said, adding that he was exceptionally surprised to learn that one trusted 27-year ACPS employee acted so badly.

For example, the senior-level employee sent a $1.25 million budget transfer request to City Council without the required School Board approval. The city did not question the request because the senior-level employee was on a list of people approved to submit such paperwork.

Sherman also noted that the now-terminated employees “had a stack of invoices that had not been processed for six months” even though there was sufficient funds to pay them all.

“These individual actions and violations led us to where we are today,” he said, adding that they “created their own parallel universe.”

The auditors’ report, released Thursday night, offers a list of problems and recommendations to solve them—all of which Sherman said he plans to implement.

“I agree with every single recommendation,” he said. For example, the auditors at Robinson Farmer Cox Associates suggest that ACPS legal counsel should review certain transactions over a specified dollar amount.

Sherman said he plans to improve communications among ACPS departments through staff changes and by instituting new, better controls and procedures.

“We will shift the culture as we shift people,” he said.

City Chief Financial Officer Laura Triggs told Patch: “We were concerned” to see the results of the report. “There have been a number of changes. We see this as an opportunity to go forward. We believe the request by the superintendent last fall was appropriate to have these things reviewed.”

Triggs said she meets with the ACPS chief financial officer to talk about “all kinds of issues, top burner issues to make sure that on both sides we’re working collaboratively.”

Sherman said the community should not come to a conclusion that problems within ACPS are widespread. Rather, he said this incident is contained to the Facilities Department and was created by rogue employees.

“When I came here there was not a strategic plan in place and no systems of accountability,” he said. “Now we have a strategic plan… and transparency working to face reality. This particular piece is so irritating. I truly believe it’s an outlier.”

He expects that the new controls and procedures will be in place by July, which is the beginning of the next fiscal year for ACPS.