Michigan had a voucher initiative on the ballot, and as in other states this election cycle it went down in flames. To their credit, the anti-voucher forces ran a very sophisticated and very expensive ad campaign that led voters to believe that the voucher proposal would cause property taxes to skyrocket and take money away from public schools.
The first claim was false — Michigan has a stringent law limiting the rate at which property taxes can increase. The second claim was true but that was the whole point — the failing school districts that the voucher proposal would have targeted needed to have money taken away from them because, for the most part, those school systems are extremely corrupt and large sums of money just end up disappearing.
As an example of how bad the situation is, The Detroit News has an investigative report about the results of a confidential audit (i.e. the News was never supposed to get a copy) that would be almost unbelievable if it weren’t for the fact that such revelations about the Detroit public schools is so common.
The audit found $630,000 that simply could not be account for from various high schools and which apparently went to line the pockets of principals and their associates at the school.
One high school principal billed the school system for his son’s trip to Italy along with almost $4,000 for alcoholic beverages! Another got the school system to cut him a $600 check so he could travel to the Final Four basketball tournament. Moreover, there was a pattern on behalf of the principals to hide revenues. In a scam typical of the schools, one principal simply stopped keeping track of attendance at athletic events so that no one will ever know if the deposited funds actually are equal to the gate receipts. At nine different schools a total of 193 days worth of lunch receipts are simply unaccounted for.
But the real kicker is how seriously the Detroit public school administrators deal with such misuse of funds. Three of the principals profiled by the Detroit News, including one ordered to pay back almost $80,000, were all promoted after the audit was conducted.
This from a school system that is constantly whining it doesn’t have enough money for supplies and other essentials for it students. Of course the local private schools spend less per pupil and achieve much better results, which was the whole point of the voucher proposal. Better that students see their principals sending their children to Italy at taxpayer expense rather than be forced to sit in a safe classroom in a private school where they might actually learn to read.
Source:
Detroit school funds misused. The Detroit News, November 20, 2000.