By Jamie Kelleher
and Jessie Rosenfeld
Staff Writers
In an open letter to the community on April 14, Manhattan Beach Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Michael Matthews recommended plans to re-allocate money to district funds in order to correct a budget error.
According to MBUSD, expenditures of $1,033,000 that the Board approved for the wireless infrastructure budget were mistakenly drawn from the General Fund, which covers operating expenses, rather than proper funds designated for facilities projects.
“[Errors] happen, and while I don’t want anyone to think we take them lightly, predicting them is a matter of being a broken clock, not a prophet,” MBUSD Deputy Superintendent Dr. Rick Bagley said.
However, the Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers’ Association believes that the mistake was a concerted action on the part of the district, based on the fact that the mismanagement decreased the General Fund, which includes teachers’ salaries. A smaller General Fund creates a less stable position for MBUTA during teacher negotiations because it appears as if the district does not have enough money to increase salaries. Additionally, MBUTA is suspicious of the fact that the district only discovered this discrepancy after two years of MBUTA asking for MBUSD to give it these financial documents. When MBUSD did not comply, MBUTA went to the Public Employment Relations Board, which issued a complaint on Oct. 4 claiming that the district was bargaining in bad faith.
“How can it be an error when for years people have been pointing to this problem?” MBUTA Vice President Adam Geczi said.
A PERB hearing on this complaint will take place on May 13. MBUTA believes that if the district had not turned over the documents, PERB would have charged MBUSD for bargaining in bad faith at the upcoming hearing.
“We have continued to ask for information we have a right to know,” MBUTA President Shawn Chen said. “They delayed until a judge made them provide it.”
According to Bagley, the Board assigned expenses for wireless infrastructure to the General Fund, while the Los Angeles County of Education finished setting up the actual fund for the expenses to be charged to, capital projects Fund 40. MBUSD was supposed to reassign these expenses from the General Fund to Fund 40 once it was set up, but it never did.
“In any school district accounting department anywhere, many thousands of transactions are processed every single year,” Bagley said. “The likelihood is probably 100% that errors occur, given we are all human and that accounting is fallible.”
Additionally, according to Matthews, expenses for wireless infrastructure that the school board assigned to Fund 25 were mistakenly reassigned to the General Fund on a separate occasion.
“I probably can’t say or do anything that will prevent some folks from fixing the blame on the board, but I do have control over what we can do to fix the problem,” Bagley said.
At the Wednesday meeting, the Board increased the General Fund balance by $1,032,563, decreased the beginning balance of Fund 25 by $457,232.18 and decreased the beginning balance of Fund 40 by $575,331 to reassign the expenses correctly to all accounts.
“I am disappointed that the error occurred, and I am taking steps to make sure that it does not occur again,” Matthews said. “I am taking steps to make sure people know what happened.”
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