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Steamboat Springs School Board members couldn't agree on the definition of accountability at Monday's meeting, in a debate that delayed adoption of the school district's gift acceptance policy.

The gift-acceptance policy defines what a gift letter must contain for the Steamboat Springs School District to accept a gift, grant, bequest or endowment from the Education Fund Board or another entity. The Fund Board administers funding from the city's voter-approved, half-cent sales tax for education. The revenues have a variety of uses including funding some teachers' salaries, supplies for students and establishing new programs at schools. Adequately tracking the use of those revenues has proved to be a sticking point for School Board members.

Board member John DeVincentis said Monday that he's brought up the issue for more than a year and that the district still was not accountable for the gift dollars it received from the community.

"Maybe I'm the only one who cares about accountability," he said. "And I care a whole hell of a lot."

Monday's second reading of the gift acceptance policy was supposed to provide clarification of accountability but came up short, said DeVincentis and School Board member Denise Connelly. She, like her colleague, wanted more quantifiable evidence that the dollars provided to the district from the public were well-spent.

Connelly said she wanted more "hard data."

"I don't think we're doing enough to honor the intention of the community," she said.

DeVincentis wanted to be told how the funding benefited students. Board member Laura Anderson agreed with DeVincentis' concern for accountability.

Superintendent Shalee Cunningham said the gift-acceptance policy addressed the "front end" of the process and concerns shared by DeVincentis and Connelly dealt with the "back end," which was evaluated annually by the district.

She said the formula started with objectives for the gift and how it would be measured, and those results were in turn shared with the board.

Board President Robin Crossan said she was prepared Monday to approve the gift acceptance policy and was surprised the issues with accountability didn't come up in prior discussions.

Board member Lisa Brown disagreed with the idea that the board wasn't holding itself accountable.

"I think we have different definitions of accountability," she said.

After the meeting, Brown added that the board's governing model, policy governance, defined expected results that were evaluated by the board. As an example, she noted that the district requires the superintendent to provide monitoring reports to evaluate her and the district's performance. If the board wasn't satisfied with those reports, Brown said, they'd ask Cunningham to do them over again.

Brown suggested the delay to allow the board to get on the same page. A motion to delay the adoption of the gift-acceptance policy and another measure, acceptance of 17 gift letters to distribute more than $1.8 million for district initiatives, failed. A motion to delay only the gift acceptance policy passed, 3-2. Crossan and Brown opposed the delay.

The gift letters, in which funding will be awarded during the fiscal year beginning July 1 for the 2009-10 school year, were approved, 4-1, in a separate motion. Again, DeVincentis voted no, citing accountability concerns.

A second reading of the gift acceptance policy is scheduled for June 15.