Brian Shane

Staff Writer
Worcester County’s school superintendent responded publicly this week to allegations of spending improprieties, stemming from an anonymous complaint lodged at the state level.

While a state report dismissed any impropriety, Superintendent Louis Taylor said he and his staff are now in the process of sorting out what new policies on spending and reimbursement might look like moving forward. He also noted the school’s system had been operating under out-of-county travel policies that “need to be more detailed.”

“We recognize some things we have to adjust,” Taylor told the Worcester County Commissioners at their Nov. 6 meeting. “As soon as we have that together, our first step will be to get approve by our Board of Education. Upon completion, we will forward that onto you.”

The complaint was reported Oct. 18 to Taylor and county officials by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for Education. It alleges school employees were “misusing education tax dollars to make personal purchases such as meals when the employees were not conducting official business or travel.”

The complaint also alleges that school employees were reimbursed for these purchases above the allowable per diem rate. However, while Worcester County Public Schools (WCPS) has no internal policies that govern reimbursement allowances or incidental expenses, there is one form, for out-of-county travel, that sets a per diem limit for meals, the report noted.

Meal reimbursements on the WCPS Travel Request Form, which is public record, are listed as $10 for breakfast, $15 for lunch, and $30 for dinner. However, this per diem limit “is not considered to comply with accepted domestic travel per diem standards,” the report says.

The OIG report also suggests WCPS conduct an internal review of its reimbursement and travel policy, last updated in 2008, to establish standards more consistent with federal or state rules.

Weston Young, Worcester County Chief Administrative Officer, notified the County Commissioners in an Oct. 29 internal memo that he’d invited Superintendent Taylor to Wednesday’s meeting to “present to the commissioners his plan to update policies to come into compliant with the issues identified in in this report.”

Young noted in his memo that the report’s apparent conclusion was that “WCPS staff cannot be held to standards that do not exist or are poorly defined.”

The state’s Office of the Inspector General for Education investigates whether local school systems and boards of education, both public and private, are compliant with federal and state laws in policies and procedures. Any complaints lodged with the agency are held in strict anonymity.

At the meeting, District 1 Commissioner Caryn Abbott questioned Taylor for the practice of using his personal credit card to pay for items instead of official county purchasing cards. She specifically cited a purchase at the Sterling Tavern in Berlin.

“That’s been the practice in the past. That will be part of what we let you all know about,” Taylor said, noting that WCPS will obtain legal advice to construct new policies.

After the OIG report was released, Taylor said in a statement, “While we anticipated that the resolution of this complaint would affirm that school system officials continue to be trusted stewards of taxpayer dollars, we appreciate the Office of the Inspector General for Education issuing this formal report dismissing any impropriety in our school system practices.”

Also at Wednesday’s meeting, the commissioners approved unanimously the school system’s five-year capital improvement plan as a planning document for the next round of big-budget WCPS projects. Those include multi-million-dollar construction projects to replace Buckingham Elementary and renovate and/or replace Berlin Intermediate School.