Thousands In School Football Money Mishandled

BY BUDDY NEVINS

 

Thousands of dollars is unaccounted from admissions, parking and concession money at Broward School’s football games.

“This is a lot of money we’re talking about,” said School Board member Donna Korn when presented with an audit report this week.

 

Donna Korn

 

The September and October 2012 audits bring back memories of my youth.

One of my father’s businesses was outdoors amusements. The shortcomings found in the audit were common money skimming tricks used by the carnies and ticket takers. The front office where my father worked was always trying to catch them.

One time my brother had a summer job as a ticket taker at the Fun House.  About an hour into his first workday, the ticket seller bawled him out.

My brother was tearing the tickets in half like he was supposed to do.  The ticket seller wanted him to not tear every ticket. He wanted to leave them whole so he could sell them again, promising to split the proceeds with my brother.

What auditors found going on at football games are the oldest ruses in the outdoors amusements.

Here are some of the findings from the audit report:

*Admission ”tickets were not torn in half by ticket takers at four football games, but placed whole in the collection bags…This creates the potential for re-sale of unaccountable tickets.”

*Booster clubs at many schools ran the concession stands.  There was no requirement that “the booster clubs report the amount of money collected to the school.”

*There was no agreements at many schools which required booster clubs to outline how they would use the concession money.

*Booster clubs were allowed to collect money for parking on public high schools during games.  “Cash handling was largely uncontrolled, and tickets or other receipting measures were not used at nine locations.”

*Cars were approached by individuals asking for different amounts of money at the same game.

*”Most schools” had no agreement with the booster clubs on how the money was being used.

All these findings violated existing School Board policies. Athletic directors, principals and booster club officials disobey policy and thousands of dollars have been mishandled.

When somebody was found to be mishandling money in the outdoors amusements business, they were fired.

The school system?

Nothing.

Nothing is really being done, except a promise to “train” school personnel in the future about following proper procedures.

The system’s chief Athletic Director Damian Huttenhof, a bureaucrat who has been around the schools forever, tried to excuse the mismanaged money.  He said it was only a few schools.

Korn wasn’t buying it.

“We fall short on so many different parts,” she said. “…This is really disturbing to me.”

She said it was not acceptable to say, “We’ll just do better in the future.”

But guess how this week’s School Board meeting ended?

Not the way Korn wanted it to.

Bureaucrats promised to just do better with football game money in the future.

After all this is the Broward school system



19 Responses to “Thousands In School Football Money Mishandled”

  1. Sam The Sham says:

    What is wrong with the School Board? When they see clear evidence that school employees are breaking policy, why don’t they turn to Runcie and ask, “Are these people being counseled, disciplined in any way or fired?”

    Has anyone ever been fired from there?

  2. They Eat Their Own says:

    And the news here is, ??? Nothing changes in so many SB BC areas…Yet those who learn to lead in this system, often are caught in situations that through little fault of their own, find themselves implementing practices they found as seemingly acceptable and widely used for decades then one day, whack! As a long timer once stated: the SBBC loves to eat it’s own!

  3. Mia says:

    Such waste… Business as usual…

  4. too funny says:

    Hel-l-l-o-o-o-! cash tendered, right? not checks, not credit cards, but cash.
    what do you expect?
    cops lift cash from busts so why wouldn’t greedy school folks?

    Next

  5. jAMIE cURRAN says:

    I’m guilty…

  6. Prochilo Supporter says:

    Melissa Prochilo gets railroaded out when Korn was representing our District and said nothing. Now she grandstands on this. Great courage on her part. Way to stand up on the tough issues. I hear next week she is focusing on an audit of certain students getting a bigger slice than others on pizza friday.

  7. Transparent says:

    This is only one audit .. Football ,What about other booster clubs ? Anyone want to take a look . Is it ok to pay outside coaches with booster money , write checks with one signature ? When you claim “pay to play ” can you collect from others as a booster member ? Can you combine boosters with other schools ? How is the money taken from one school and collected and used by another ? Someone needs to maybe call the IRS

  8. My 2 cent opinion says:

    Certainly the IRS is a great place to start,but let’s stop the nonsense and maybe have the FBI look into the nonsense of mishandling monies in great quantities without consequences or accountability. There are certainly rules in place and they were not followed. Actions should be taken against those said individuals. Just because it is within a school system does not make it any less of a crime then say a “mafia” type criminal organization….just my two cent opinion…..

  9. Confused says:

    #6…who is Melissa Prochilo? Is she the person that was collecting the tickets at the football games?

  10. Floridan says:

    Buddy’s post is a bit vague on whether or not the auditors said that money was missing or anyone was committing a crime.

    Most of these activities are being conducted by volunteers, often teenagers. Tighten up procedures, of course, but felonious intent is not the most logical explanation in this case.

  11. Tennis says:

    Booster Clubs are not informed of the Policy and Procedures that are in place before they are established. Why do the Athletic Directors continue to skate-free from their responsibilities? It is their job to make sure everyone is following the rules. The IRS should be called when people are getting checks written directly to them (coaches?). The principal, assistant principal, the athletic direct…..how many more people knew??? Now Runcie can clean-house!!!

  12. SAM FIELDS says:

    Here’s a more basic question? Why do we have high school football at all?

    Imagine how long we would continue chemistry classes if 10% of the students required medical intervention from laboratory accidents?

    I’m pretty sure football is way higher than 10%. We all know guys who are limping in middle age from arthritic knees that were torn up in high school football.

    One study indicated that high school football produced 67,000 concussions a year. Based on player reported symptoms the real numbers may be much bigger. Who knows how many concussions are promoting later life early onset dementia? It doesn’t start in the NFL.

    And the taxpayers are paying for this?????

  13. Chaz Stevens, Malcontent says:

    Sam;

    Taking your thought to its logical conclusion.

    Imagine if we just stopped teaching math and science, and turned to the Bible — that’s a big money saver right there!

    And the good thing — there’s no worry about being concussed … however we’d have to be vigilant about the occasional plague, swarm of locus, and pissed off Guy in the Sky.

    Praise be to Jesus!

  14. modeengunch says:

    @12 About what you’d expect from a 10 thumb spastic.

  15. Concerned says:

    I think Korn is doing a great job with extremely difficult situations. She is in touch with reality as this new breed of parents haven’t a clue as to what is really going on. It all should be about the kids, not Prochilo, not Collado and certainly not the egomaniac parents that are being allowed to run the school and I don’t mean the cheerleading parents!

  16. Christine says:

    Hey Sam,

    Instead of football, why not teach compassion, forgiveness, cooperation, collegiality, respect and selflessness?

    Oh wait.

    Many of us do.

    It’s called Christianity.

  17. Rush Limbaugh says:

    I thought Board Member Patricia Good said that the Athletic Director had done a good job and the Chief Auditor did a bad job.

    Then where is the money??

  18. Anonymous says:

    I was paid legitimate overtime and compared to this my amount was peanut. Yet I was accused of being dishonest, etc.

    I am also a veteran and served my country in that capacity too. I only took $80K overtime over three years and now look what is going on!!

  19. laughable says:

    80k overtime in three years. That’s more than 25k a year! Even if your salary was 100k, which its not, that’s a 25% of your salary in overtime. That’s outrageous!
    Its not your fault Kale, I blame the idiot administrator that approved such unnecessary extra time at the taxpayer expense.
    To put that into perspective that’s MORE THAN $2K/MONTH OVERTIME ON TOP OF YOUR “SALARY”

    For 26k, you could hire professional ticket takers and hourly staff that will provide much more coverage than your time and a half at bloated cost.

    When teachers start acting like professionals, who often work overtime for free, then they will be treated like professionals. But they, through their union, have taken a blue collar hourly worker mentality, and then complain when they are treated as such!