Published: January 11, 2009 12:01 am      

LUCINSKI: The dog ate my homework

You’ve all heard the story about the student who habitually was late in turning in his schoolwork. He offered his teachers all sorts of excuses on why it was tardy or missing entirely. He eventually ran out of plausible reasons and told one of his instructors, “The dog ate my homework.”

We had a grown-up example of that just last week and it had to do with the Niagara Falls school system. But the scene did not play out in the classroom. It was in the boardroom instead.

At Thursday’s board meeting, it was revealed that the district has to borrow $10 million to meet its various expenses for the month. The interest and legal fees to do so will total about $30,000. The reason for the borrowing: The state withheld its aid check to the district for November and December. The reason for that: The administration was late in forwarding a copy of an independent auditor’s report to Albany.

The reason for the delay was equivalent to the dog-ate-my-homework excuse. “I thought the deadline was Dec. 1. So I thought we were already late,” said Finance Director Joe Giarizzo. “I didn’t realize it was Dec. 15 and may not have acted with as much urgency as I should have.”

Wait a minute. Because you already missed the deadline, you didn’t think it was urgent enough to get the report to the state as quickly as possible? Missing a deadline usually means trying to make up for lost time, not a reason to slack off even more.

And why wasn’t the deadline known to school officials? Was the state unclear on its requirements? Or did the staff simply mess up? Rather than dismiss it as a snafu, there needs to be some accountability.

The Niagara Falls School District is facing some tough times. Not only is state aid expected to be cut this year, the district is looking at a multi-million dollar budget deficit. In light of all that, $30,000 might not seem like a lot.

But tell that to the extra employee that will have to be laid off to make up for the mistake. The money that he or she would have received in wages is instead going to lawyers and investment bankers to pay for the borrowing. Or maybe fewer textbooks will be purchased or an extra student or two will have to be placed in a few classrooms to make up the difference.

We often hear that we’re spending money for the children. That’s supposed to justify a whole lot of things. It should never justify waste. The $30,000 it will cost for the unnecessary borrowing is waste, pure and simple. It does not pay a teacher. It does not buy a book. It is waste.

The Niagara Falls district has recently faced some harsh criticism, mostly from the state comptroller. Those criticisms include unauthorized payments to employees, the misuse of district credit accounts and discrepancies in the issuing of health coverage, including the insuring of dead people. This latest misstep, while less in monetary value, is no less indicative of a lax attitude in running the ship.

It’s probably too early to lay this one at the feet of Interim Superintendent Cynthia Bianco. After all, she’s only been officially on the job a couple of weeks. And even though she’s been a deputy superintendent for years, she’ll have to get used to the buck stopping at her desk.

But if she aspires to the district’s top job on a permanent basis, as she says she does, she needs to get a handle on the district operations and she needs to do it quickly. An entity facing the financial challenges of the kind staring at the Falls school system can ill afford to leak thousands of dollars at a time because of mismanagement and lack of initiative.

So the dog ate our homework. Unfortunately the students and the taxpayers, the people who mean the most in this whole equation, will wind up paying the price.

Dick Lucinski is the managing editor of the Niagara Gazette. His columns appear on Wednesday and Sunday.