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Superintendent Accused of Lying About Money. . . . When Will They Notice He Lied About Students?
Birmingham and state officials on Tuesday accused former Superintendent Johnny Brown of mismanaging the city school system and lying to hide its true financial shape.

They said Alabama's third-largest school district is just 14 months away from facing a $13 million deficit unless the system moves quickly to cut costs, which eventually means jobs.

In a meeting with reporters Tuesday, city and state officials laid out results of an ongoing review of system finances. The review started shortly after Brown left to take over as superintendent of DeKalb County, Ga., schools.

So far, the review's more important findings include:

A projected deficit of $13 million by Sept. 30, 2003.

Extremely high administrative costs for a system Birmingham's size.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime payments to employees with seemingly little to no supervision.

Illegal advance payments or loans to some employees.

Brown scoffed at the accusations.

"This is pure nonsense," Brown said Tuesday from his office in metro Atlanta. "When we left there was money in the bank, the audits were good and test scores were on the rise. I was proud, I am proud, of the work we were able to do for students in Birmingham. I think most of this is just an effort to make excuses for the circumstances they now find themselves in."

State officials and city school board members have had suspicions for months that Birmingham school finances were not solid. Robert Morton, assistant state superintendent, said Tuesday he has not seen any other school system where management had allowed overtime pay to balloon out of control or where administration is so top-heavy in numbers or where some employees were allowed to get illegal loans.

Asked if the system had been mismanaged, Morton said yes. Asked if there was an effort to hide the system's true financial shape over the past several years, Morton said yes. . . .

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Ohanian Comment: Okay, they followed the money. When will they start following students? Nobody knows how many students are missing, pushed out of school to make the state test scores look good--so Superintendent Johnny Brown could take his bonus money and run.

The involuntarily removal of the Birmingham 522 from Birmingham high schools has been documented. Treatment of these missing 522 is the shame of the Birmingham City School administration and of great concern to educators and parents across the nation. We can only wonder how long it will take politicos and the press to be similarly worried.

Residents of DeKalb County Georgia should be advised to watch their pockets--and the numbers of kids leaving school without diplomas.
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— Charles J. Dean
Brown Hid Financial Woes, Say Officials
Birmingham News
July 31, 2002
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/102810721242800.xml

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