Superintendent: Iowa City schools will fix problems found in audit

IOWA CITY –The Iowa City school district will correct the problems laid out in an external review of the district's operations, Superintendent Stephen Murley said Tuesday night.

He also said he will soon give the school board a strategic plan on how administrators will tackle the issues and there will be regular updates to the board and the public on their progress.

“Some will be done more quickly and some will take time to do,” Murley said.

The school board on Tuesday received an audit report from Synesi Associates out of Wilmette, Ill., that reviews the district's operations.

The audit, which was called for after a couple of embarrassing financial miscues by the district, was released publicly earlier this month. It found several shortcomings dealing with accounting, budgeting, purchasing, human resources, the physical plant and other areas.

Synesi's Phil Hansen ran through the report for the school board and provided several recommendations, including:

• The need for standard operating procedures across the district.
• The implementation of an enterprise resource planning system, which is software that integrates departments across an organization.
• Improved interoffice communication.
• A budget process that involves key educational personnel and is transparent.
• An open competitive-bidding process.

Hansen said the district does a great job overall, but its operations and procedures are more like a small school district's and must be improved.

“It's time to come into the 21

^st

century,” he said.

Murley, who started with the district in July 2010, said his administrative team already has discussed the report. School board members stressed that they want regular updates, with Tuyet Dorau saying  many of the issues have been known for years.

“These are items that are not new for the district,” she said.

A couple of community members were critical of the school board, however.

Phil Hemingway, who lost a bid for a seat on the school board last year and has been complaining about problems with the district's physical plant and other areas for a couple of years, used the Synesi report as an I-told-you-so moment and to rip a couple of district administrators personally.

“It's about time that the underlying problems be brought to light,” he said.

Another failed school board candidate, Julie VanDyke, also called out some administrators by name and said current and past school board members have ignored the problems for years.

“You let this happen,” she told the board. “You did nothing.”

Jeff McGinness, who joined the school board in September, said he saw the report as a positive way for the district to move forward and didn't like how some people were turning it into a negative.

An attorney, McGinness also said he was worried the district could open itself up to potential liability issues by allowing people to use the public comment portion of meetings to make personal attacks on non-elected officials.