How Public Schools Are Wasting & Abusing Our Tax Dollars

Over the past month, all you seem to hear dominating the news reports is DOGE. The Trump appointed agency is finding government waste on a mass scale, and politicians are going ballistic in fear that their pocket-lining schemes will be exposed. The problem has also been going on for years right inside our state and county governments, including our local school systems. We hear quite often, “Maryland needs a DOGE.” That can happen, but it must start with the people.

The concept of DOGE is really nothing new. There just needs to be people that are actually willing to take a stand to expose the waste, fraud, and abuse and put an end to it. The Delmarva Parent Teacher Coalition has worked since 2020 to expose the waste, fraud, and abuse in our local school systems in multiple counties. Prior to that, there have been very few citizens that have attempted to expose government waste, fraud, and abuse, but have always been railroaded, ignored, or discredited by the local media, which the school systems control.

Ironically, all of these agencies and local school systems have ethics policies, committees, and even whistleblower policies for the appearance of compliance and accountability. Notice we used the word appearance.

Elected school boards have legal immunity, which means that they can’t be personally sued for carrying out their elected duties. School administrations also share a form of immunity as an education institution. They always seem to get away with illegal practices, which would otherwise result in jail if a citizen did the same. There’s never any legal ramifications if they get caught, because who would ever bring forth consequences that would negatively impact a school that’s tasked with teaching children? Only a monster would do such a thing.

We are going to show you the main areas of waste, fraud, and abuse practiced by our local school systems.

1. Misappropriation of funds. This is a common one, where budgeted items are not spent as intended, repurposing these funds for something entirely different after the budget is approved.

2. Secret bank accounts that are not publicly disclosed. We have discovered that all school systems have secret accounts that you do not see disclosed in the school system’s general fund. These secret account(s) are used to establish a slush fund. Whenever a large legal settlement or excessive insurance claim occurs, it can’t come from the general fund. It comes from the slush fund! Some of these accounts contain leftover Covid-19 relief funds from the CARES Act and ESSER that were designed to be allocated to health. School systems have millions stashed away for that rainy day.

3. Gaming the board’s minimum purchase authorization. The school system is required to have board approval for any purchases of $25K or more under state legislation. Administration will take a vendor and make arrangements for installments with the vendor to game the threshold. For example, if a contract is $60K, administration will arrange three installments over time for $20K each. They therefore undermine accountability and authority, making it difficult for the board to discover through three separate transactions over time.

4. Purchasing unneeded items to consume the budget. The “use it or lose it” game has been practiced for years. Instead of saving the taxpayers money through good stewardship, they exhaust the budget whether they need it or not. In the last hours of the school year, they order things like 40 cases of glue sticks that will dry up over the summer before the teachers could ever use them. In another example, a school system purchased a bunch of overpriced laptop charging stations, which they ended up not using. It’s whatever it takes to maxout the expenditures, so that they can artificially justify a 3-6% increase for the next school year. It’s a filthy game.

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