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By Rachel Dodakian
The Wauwatosa School District spent at least $45,000 in taxpayer money in the 2004-05 school year on travel-related expenses, including trips to the Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells and 10 out-of-state events, including a trip for two to New York City’s Hilton on Broadway—which cost nearly $1,000.
While district officials defend the spending as useful, some in the community question if the spending is as frugal as it could be.
When broken down over a monthly basis, travel-related expenses came to nearly $2,500 per month, over three times as much as the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Wauwatosa.
District administrators attended at least 73 staff-development-related conferences in cities such as Orlando, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Miami and Chicago, with hotel costs averaging $150 per night.
The Frontpage Milwaukee investigation comes several months after the Greendale School District was accused by a local taxpayer group of wasteful spending of district money on travel-related expenses. Public records requests made by the Greendale Taxpayers Group revealed a total of 92 out-of-state trips in one year and allegedly extravagant dining both in local establishments and out of town, all charged to the school district’s credit card.
The Wauwatosa School District initially estimated the cost at $1,100 to fill a public records request for specific expense forms tracking how administrators and employees spent district dollars. After some negotiating that drastically narrowed the scope of the request, district officials agreed to provide the information for $135, on the condition the requestor help locate and re-file the forms in question.
In Wauwatosa, the total amount budgeted for travel-related expenses for the 2004-05 school fiscal year was $93,400, and the actual amount spent was $76,045. While the $45,000 spent on travel-related costs by Wauwatosa represents only a portion spending over a year and a half and comes in under the annual budgeted amount, the find does come at a time in Wauwatosa when both property tax assessments are on the rise and school district teachers’ contracts are up in the air due to salary concerns.
Wauwatosa School District Superintendent Phillip Ertl maintains that travel-related spending is within appropriate limits, relatively speaking, and that such spending is an important part of “staff development.”
“Our spending is comparatively very low,” Ertl said referring to staff development spending by other comparably-sized school districts, though not citing specific districts or dollar amounts.
Tosans for Responsible Government co-chair and Treasurer Stan Zurawski reached a starkly different conclusion from Ertl upon learning that at least $45,000 has been spent on travel-related costs and food for locally held meetings.
“I think that’s outrageous,” Zurawski said.
According to expense claim vouchers, meals, hotels, mileage and registration fees account for the bulk of these expenditures.
Some of these expenses included:
· $396.75 for Deliciously Different Caterers for a leadership meeting
· $179 per night stays at the Hilton Hotel in New York City
· $1,041 for stays at the Kalahari Resort and Conference Center
· $139 per night stays at the Marriott Hotel in Chicago
· $30 dinner at Captain Bill’s Seafood for one person
· $516 to attend a quilting conference in Madison
· $44 food bill at Good Company in Appleton—spouse’s meal approved for reimbursement
· $26.95 halibut dinner for one person at Fulton’s Crab House in Florida
· $26.95 filet/tail dinner for one person at Fulton’s Crab House in Florida
· $259 per night stay at Westin Hotel in Chicago
· $331 for car rental while in Orlando—which cost more than the roundtrip airfare to Orlando)
According to Business Services Director John Mack, who ultimately decides how much to reimburse an employee for travel-related expenses, no written policy exists establishing maximum reimbursements for meals.
In an earlier interview when he discussed how such expenses are necessary for staff development, Ertl said that written guidelines with set dollar amounts for meals in fact do exist.
When asked exactly what Ertl meant by the term “staff development,” he replied, “it means taking people where they’re at and helping them grow.”
Asked to provide some examples of how such conferences have helped teachers grow, Ertl could not name anything specific and seemed eager to instead talk about the benefits these conferences hold for administrators.
Ertl named the Cooperative Education Services Agency, the HOPE conference and the National Association of Secondary School Principals convention as among those of utmost value to staff development. He said that such conferences helped the district address educational priorities such as the achievement gap, cultural issues in schools and other things they should be focusing on. In terms of expenses related to hotels and registration fees for conferences, Ertl maintained that such costs were worth it.
When asked if district administrators could still gain the essence of such conferences without having to physically travel to them, he replied, “No. I think those are important.” He added, “It’s not just the content of the speakers, but the networking and interaction of the colleagues.”
The total amount reimbursed to employees by the district for meals alone during conferences and seminars held out of town came to just over $2,300 over a 17-month period. This does not include the amount spent on catered meetings and workshops held on district grounds or locally in Wauwatosa.
The district usually orders from Milwaukee caterers, “Deliciously Different,” for administrative meetings held locally. For example, an order for $396.75 worth of club, roast beef, and turkey sandwiches was delivered to the Hawthorne Terrace for a leadership meeting in August 2004, held on a Wednesday at around lunch time. Another August 2004 meeting held on a Thursday around lunch time cost the district $265.30 for a sandwich buffet tray ordered from the same caterers. The delivery charge alone cost the district $20 for each delivery.
Through May of 2006, the district spent just under $1,000 on catering for meetings and workshops held in Wauwatosa.
When asked if he felt such spending was essential to the professional development of district employees, Ertl replied, “Everything we do is worth it.”
He contended that if meetings were being held during times of the day when meals normally occurred, then refreshments were most certainly in order. In his opinion, the district had a responsibility to provide meals in this context. When asked specifically about a long-range planning committee meeting Ertl organized in March 2006 which cost the district upwards of $600 to cater, he said that about half of the 43 people in attendance were members of the general public and food should definitely be served.
Wauwatosa School Board President Lois Weber agreed with Ertl on the topic of catered meetings. “Some of these people are giving up a full day’s work to serve on these committees,” Weber said in defense of catered meetings.
Weber also defended attendance at conferences as necessary to helping the staff grow and share ideas. She said she knew little about the details of a quilting conference that cost over $500 but was confident it had its place in the curriculum. Weber said of the fact that several thousands of school district dollars went towards high-end hotels such as the Westin and the Hilton, “I don’t like that things cost money, but they do.”
When asked if she thought district administrators and employees would spend $26.95 on a halibut dinner if they had been paying for such meals out of their own pockets, she said yes they most likely would because, she argued, people tend more often to eat healthy, high-quality food anyway.
“If you knew anything about our superintendent you’d know that he is very conservative with spending,” she added.
Zurawski, from Tosans for Responsible Government, disagreed. He was interested to learn what sort of cost-benefit analysis is in place to determine if such expenditures are really worth it.
Some Wauwatosa residents echoed Zurawski’s view to an extent, and some questioned the role such events play in general in terms of educational benefits.
“What you’re talking about is the cost of doing business,” said Wauwatosa resident Jon Jensen.
Kari Kleinowski, a second grade public school teacher in Milwaukee and a Wauwatosa resident said of the $45,000 spent by the district on costs related to conferences, “It’s probably not necessary for all of that, no.”
As a schoolteacher, Kleinowski expressed mixed views upon hearing that administrators and teachers attended at least 123 conferences and seminars, among them, a conference on quilting that cost over $500. “I think there are some beneficial ones and some that are probably not.”
One Wauwatosa resident questioned why those attending conferences in Chicago couldn’t take the train down for the day, instead of driving down and staying at hotels like the Westin and the Marriott.
In terms of establishing how conferences directly benefit students, Wauwatosa School District’s Director of Student Learning, Susan Drinkwine, said that “Building Goals” structure how changes and developments are addressed within the district. She said teams at each school are part of the continuous improvement process.
She explained that as part of that process, each building has a team of staff under the leadership of the principal which reviews data, including student achievement data, parent-community data, professional practice data, and program and structures data.
When asked how Drinkwine determines if a conference is absolutely necessary, she said there aren’t any hard and fast rules.
“There’s not a rule carved in stone across the district because the culture of one school’s needs is not the same as another’s,” said Drinkwine.
Asked to give an example of a conference that best spoke to the culture of needs of a given school, Drinkwine could not name any one conference in particular.
As stated earlier, no written guidelines for reimbursement amounts exist according to the district’s financial manager Mack. However he does employ a system that establishes some limits when it comes to meal costs.
“What I check for is reasonableness of the expenditures, particularly the meals,” Mack said. “For example, if I see a person spending $50 for steak and lobster I will reduce the meal reimbursement to $25.”
Based on reimbursement records kept by the district’s own financial office, at least two instances were found when an employee, while dining during the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development conference in Orlando, was reimbursed $26.95 for lobster tail and halibut dinners. Mack did reduce the original amount requested by the employee who ordered the halibut dinner from $46.95, to $26.95.
Another record documented a reimbursement for the amount of $44, which included the cost for a spouse or family member of a district athletic director to dine at Good Company in Appleton, WI.
The practice of paying for a family member’s meal runs contrary to what Ertl named as expenses not covered by the district. Among the other things he mentioned that fell outside of the realm of reimbursement for travel-related expenses were alcohol and entertainment. No records of reimbursements for expenses of that nature were found during the investigation.
Mack said the money used to pay for catered meetings, or “internal activities,” comes from the district’s account marked “supplies.” When an employee is attending a conference or seminar held out of town, the meal is paid for from the account marked, “travel,” according to Mack.
Ertl said that areas of the school district’s budget which concern him most are its retirement and healthcare components. He added that overall costs for staff development were being trimmed over time.
The $45,000 in travel-related expenses represents a portion of activity from school’s fiscal year from July 2004 through December 2005 and was determined through public records requests made to the school district.
The district initially wanted $1,150 to fill the request, which had originally sought a review of all reimbursement payments made to employees for hotels, meals, mileage, airfare, and registration fees. This request, which would have given a complete picture of spending details, would have taken 80 work hours to complete because the records were not kept electronically, according to a letter from Ertl dated April 6, 2006.
Mary Burke, an attorney from the State Programs, Administration and Revenue unit, a division within the Attorney General’s office that assists and advises the public on guidelines for public information requests, said she “questioned the length of time,” the school district said it would take to locate and retrieve even non-electrically kept files.
Burke was consulted on more than one occasion for guidance on how to proceed with obtaining the information sought in the public records request, and at one point said she was, “losing patience,” with what she felt was the district’s obfuscation and continued lack of explanation for exactly why it would take so long to fill the original request.
Compared to last year, the school district’s overall budget has increased by $12.9 million, with the amount of local tax dollars budgeted for the school increasing by just over one million dollars. The tax levy for Wauwatosa has decreased by just under two-tenths of one percent from last year, after its steady rise since 2002, while property tax assessments for Wauwatosa have increased by approximately four percent from last year.
The property tax assessment increase means that compared to last year, on average people are paying approximately $40 more per year in property taxes—about the cost to fill one’s gas tank. The average monthly mileage cost for the Wauwatosa School District comes to approximately $422. The amount by which property taxes increased this year on about 10 average-priced homes is what it would take to cover the cost of one month’s worth of mileage for the district with current gas prices as they are now.
Domenic Serena attends Milwaukee Lutheran High School, which is part of the Wauwatosa School District. Serena is a high school senior and plans on attending the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee next year as a business major. He works part-time at the Sendik’s on North Ave. in Wauwatosa and said he was surprised to learn how much teachers and administrators in his school district have spent on costs related to meetings and conferences.
According to Serena it sounded like a lot. The spending habits of the district become excessive, he said, “when efficiency turns to luxury.”
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