The Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board is once again featured on the front page of the Indianapolis Star, this time in the Monday morning edition. The story is all about a proposed contract with Bondry Consulting and the board’s interactions with Chief Financial Officer Katy Dowling.
I have reported previously on all this, but reporter Rachell Fradette does a deeper dive into the story. It all revolves around HSE School Board Member Ben Orr’s desire to have outside financial advice and Dowling questions why he needs that since that is her job as CFO.
Orr endorsed the work Dowling is doing for the school district, but reporter Fradette reminds her readers that Dowling’s contract did not receive the 2-year renewal that had been traditional previously.
There is a lot more to read in the IndyStar story, which you can access at this link. (NOTE: Access to this story may be limited if you are not an IndyStar subscriber. Online subscriptions are relatively inexpensive. Once again, please, subscribe to your local media!)
Fire Dowling. She is incompetent
What possible evidence do you have that the CFO of the fourth largest school district in Indiana is “incompetent”? It seems like the Board is the one without the knowledge to evaluate the finances, nor the humility to ask questions.
Based on???????????
Dowling has gotten high praise from the Republican city council president as well a high marks from state-stop spreading misinformation
My spouse is an employee of the corporation. The impression of many teachers and administrators (perhaps, even, a healthy majority), is that the Fishers One board members and their allies are generally hostile to to the concept of traditional, American, public education. Their campaigns showed this. They don’t believe in that mission. Their goal is to change it…but to what?
Looking at our political climate, and many stories in the news over the past ten years, the conservative MO is to cast doubt on institutions while enriching friends, family, and donors. Am I missing something? School board is supposed to be a non-partisan position. But less than half of the board is trying to play by the rules (e.g. challenging secret/unofficial meetings), while the other half is playing a different game entirely. They aren’t even trying to be secret about it. They rely on the “normies” to simply not believe that this is happening in plain sight.
How many new teachers could be hired with the Board’s misappropriations of only the past couple months? Then add this misadventure.
Frankly, this is where Larry’s observations about the decline of local media really hurts us. Well, not the observation, but the fact. There just aren’t the resources to do the kind of investigative journalism required to document how deep this goes. What other kinds of “consultants” should we keep an eye out for, siphoning funding from teachers, classrooms, and students? How else are they going to sow distrust and undermine the institution?
I see nothing wrong with seeking additional advice from a third party concerning the stewardship of $296,000,000 of taxpayer dollars. If there is nothing to hide, no one else should either.
If only there was a website where the state collected all financial data about public schools, sorted by school-system and posted it for the citizens of that state to be able to view in full detail.
Oh wait… it’s available here:
https://eddata.doe.in.gov/PublicHome/GetObjectByUuidAndViewType?uuid=0578b160-8927-46cf-8066-b170a3639fbd&viewType=Report¤tPage=1
Use the “Descriptive Listing by Fund and Account” report and you can see detailed categorization for all $296 million. But you won’t do that because it’s just a strawman argument and you don’t really care—you just want to find a bogeyman to be mad about.
Bingo ! Anger & calls for ‘change’ wins elections .. it’s a proven formula that an emotional, stirred up electorate falls for regularly both locally & nationally.
In the case of HSE ; decades of experience were tossed out the widow in favor of red meat ideology, inserting members that haven’t a clue what a functioning school board should look like & as iterated ; an embarrassment for the community.