Home

Taxpayers of Northwest Colorado deserve a clear and honest explanation for why our regional Board of Cooperative Educational Services overspent last year’s budget, withheld federal funding from districts and increased what it said districts would owe in 2009-10. Similarly, immediate action must be taken to ensure proper financial oversight and accountability for an organization that handles millions of dollars in education funding each year while providing essential special education services to more than 600 regional K-12 students.

Northwest Colorado BOCES member districts and the Colorado Department of Education have spent the past several months examining our regional organization, and there are still as many questions as answers. But what’s glaringly clear is that poor oversight led to unacceptable budget deficits, a questionable allocation of federal stimulus dollars and concerns about BOCES’ ability to provide necessary services for Northwest Colorado students with special needs.

Here’s what we do know:

■ The Northwest Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services overspent its 2008-09 budget by more than $300,000 but didn’t inform its member districts about the deficit until after the 2008-09 school year had ended.

■ In addition to overspending its 2008-09 budget, BOCES officials informed member districts that they were under-assessed for 2009-10 school year services. According to BOCES, member districts needed to provide $481,000 more than what they were told in May, when the districts were completing and approving preliminary 2009-10 budgets.

■ The school districts said they didn’t have the money to pay for the additional 2008-09 and 2009-10 assessments and instead requested that BOCES cut its budget to make up for the revenue shortfall.

■ BOCES owed its member districts $777,000 in federal title program funding. BOCES was supposed to pass the funding on to its member districts but instead used it to pay for its own operational expenses. Because BOCES failed to properly disburse that money, the state Department of Education has taken away its ability to receive those funds in the 2009-10 school year.

■ A special audit of BOCES is under way. The draft results were released Thursday, but the auditor advised that the audit was a “moving target.”

■ BOCES has sought permission to use federal stimulus dollars to help make up its 2008-09 budget year deficit.

Jane Toothaker, the longtime executive director of BOCES, says the poor accounting was the result of her receiving bad information from a previous financial director who has since been replaced. She insists there was no criminal or fraudulent activity that led to overspending and poor accounting.

Regardless, the financial condition and management of the organization has been unacceptable. To their credit, the superintendents of BOCES member districts have taken a lead role in investigating the organization’s financial and organizational problems. Going forward, the superintendents say they will review the organization’s monthly financial statements, a much-needed practice that was not previously in place.

Additionally, Steamboat Springs School District Superintendent Shalee Cunningham says her district will present in March a list of services it will provide itself in coming years instead of contracting for those services with BOCES.

The concept of boards of cooperative educational services is that by pooling resources, smaller, rural school districts can better provide required special education programming for their students.

But the BOCES system has its faults. There’s little accountability at the state and federal levels, even though BOCES organizations tend to be responsible for multimillion-dollar annual budgets and are on the receiving end of significant federal grants. The only real accountability is with BOCES boards of directors, groups that tend to meet sporadically and are made up of member district representatives.

As we’ve seen with BOCES, that structure is inadequate for ensuring sound fiscal management of taxpayer dollars.

We don’t know what the end result of the internal inquiries will be, but we do know this: BOCES structures must change and that might necessitate intervention at the state level. Our own state legislators — Sen. Al White, R-Hayden, and Rep. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs — should be at the forefront of an effort to investigate the statewide BOCES structure and recommend changes that will all but guarantee responsible oversight of education funding and essential special education services. Students, families and taxpayers deserve no less.