Who's To Blame For Mercer Island School Financial Woes?

When school-district finances run aground, to what extent should the public hold the school board responsible?

Superintendents, like R. Corey Wentzell in the recent Mercer Island School District budget fiasco, are ultimately fiscally responsible.

But school boards hire superintendents. In this case, the Mercer Island School Board selected Wentzell just 18 months ago over two seasoned former and current Seattle School District administrators.

Wentzell resigned last month after accepting blame for the $730,000 budget debt. Dick Giger, on leave as deputy superintendent for the Northshore School District, was appointed Monday as Mercer Island interim superintendent for up to 16 months.

"Clearly there is no easy formula for trying to distinguish what is a school board governing function and what is a superintendent's managing function," said Larry Swift, executive director of the Washington State School Directors' Association. "It's a hard task to sort that out so the board is fulfilling its governing responsibility but at the same time not disrupting the schools' day-to-day management. Each individual case works differently."

In the Mercer Island case, it didn't work. As the deficit piled up, backlogged financial reports and a silent superintendent kept the information from reaching board members until the School District attorney notified them last January, said President Nancy Clancy.

The superintendent's hurried switch in accounting systems delayed the October and November financial reports for two months. The board finally received the reports on Jan. 23, the day before they were notified of the deficit.

"The relationship with the board and the superintendent has often been likened to a marriage; it is supposed to be a relationship based on trust. When that goes bad you find out a lot of things that people assumed you knew but you didn't," Clancy said.

She said the board members were looking for a visionary when they selected Wentzell.

Wentzell was 37 then, with only two years experience as superintendent in Abbotsford, B.C.

"In my mind it was time to take off in new educational directions," Clancy said. "We wanted to get the staff excited about new ideas in teaching. What we ended up with was far more the visionary and far less the manager."

The bulk of the debt resulted from Wentzell's hiring of 14 people beyond the personnel budget, three teachers and 11 bus drivers and office and classroom assistants, according to an audit by a state budget committee. It was an administrative decision, but one that drew concern in the district office at least a month before the crisis broke.

Personnel Director John Evans altered the authorization forms in December to require the signature of Deputy Superintendent Steven Policar in addition to Wentzell's.

Policar, by then also concerned about district spending, refused to sign the forms, Evans said. Policar was demoted to associate superintendent for business and is now on indefinite medical leave.

Three central office staff members finally tipped off district legal counsel Chris Hirst in January - but not board members.

Mismanagement such as occurred on Mercer Island is uncommon, said Ron Stead, financial-services supervisor for the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who also served on the audit committee.

But Karen Taylor Sherman, a former 12-year Issaquah School Board member, said she is surprised school district financial crises do not occur more often, especially given the tight economic times. When a similar crisis occurred in Issaquah five years ago, the board ended up firing the superintendent and spending the next few years recovering from the $1.1 million debt.

"Anybody who thinks it cannot happen to them because they are too smart, too experienced, too whatever, are foolish," said Sherman, who retired from the board in December. "Many of the school districts in the state are right on the thin edge financially. I don't think what happened on Mercer Island is unusual."

Sherman said she was a different board member after the crisis, a change Clancy claims as well.

"We are not supposed to cross the line into administration," Sherman said. "We are supposed to set policy. But I was much more inclined to ask many more questions and scrutinize more closely because I had been so badly betrayed."

Before winning a board seat last November, however, Veronica Meneses-Swift said she and many other Mercer Island residents had been suspicious of Wentzell's overspending - from inflated administrative salaries to staff car phones - and the board should have taken a closer look earlier.

"The crisis hasn't changed my focus or role on the board," said Meneses-Swift, who had just begun her term when the debt was discovered. "I ran for the board to ask the tough questions. There is a philosophical split on the board. My perspective is we should know what is going on."