Tennessee officials say the results of a major forensic audit of Memphis-Shelby County Schools provides clear evidence of “widespread operational failures.”
"The board of education, the leadership in the school system, does not now and has not ever exhibited an expectation that things are done right," said state Comptroller Jason Mumpower at a Wednesday morning press conference in Nashville. "There is a major lack of accountability across the Memphis-Shelby School System."
Officials emphasized that the 329-page interim report represented only about a quarter of the auditing that has left to be completed on the state’s largest school district, which has a $1.8 billion annual budget.
"This audit outlines a school system that is extremely dysfunctional," said Mumpower, who added it was the "worst management" of any organization he has seen in his career.
The independent audit, funded by the state, was initiated last August in the wake of the school board’s firing of Superintendent Marie Feagins. Its findings so far include $1.1 million in waste and abuse related to contract spending. Another $1.7 million in spending was not in compliance with district policies and procedures. More than 170 deficiencies or observations related to spending, document storage and cyber security were noted.
Democratic lawmakers reacted separately to the report.
"Let's put this audit in perspective," wrote Sen. London Lamar of Memphis in a statement. "Tennessee taxpayers spent $6 million — with another $1.7 million budgeted for next year — so the state could find less than $3 million in bookkeeping irregularities across a $5.7 billion budget over three years. That's a fraction of a fraction of one percent."
House Speaker Cameron Sexton said the report speaks to systemic problems in the district that educates one in 10 children in this state.
"When you have this kind of mismanagement in the financial side of it, we understand now why there’s so mismanagement on the expectations of what’s being produced from those classrooms," Sexton said.
The report comes the morning after the MSCS Board named Roderick Richmond as the district’s new permanent superintendent. His tenure could be shortened or seriously complicated by proposed legislation that would temporarily put the district in the control of a new board of managers appointed by Republican lawmakers.
The legislation's Republican sponsors, Mark White in the House and Brent Taylor in the Senate, say the audit results will help to fast-track their "intervention" efforts, which opponents characterize as a takeover.
In a statement to Chalkbeat TN, Superintendent Richmond said district leaders will release their own report Monday responding to claims in the audit.
