Concerns over schools' spending

while school districts say budget cuts will hurt kids and classrooms -- a new report released tod...  More »

while school districts say budget cuts will hurt kids and classrooms -- a new report released today finds some districts are shelling out serious money on i-pods and s-u-v's. our gadi schwartz first broke the story yesterday at six -- finding some questionable spending in las vegas. today he's at the roundhouse where lawmakers peered into the books of a few other school districts.// the report, which is about 80 pages, details how 5 randomly selected new mexico school districts spend taxpayer money. lawmakers who reviewed the report today aren't happy. think a district needs to spend more than 11,000 dollars on i-pods? bloomfield's district did. the report also raises questions about whether the west las vegas school district really needs to spend around 30- thousand dollars to buy interactive -- laptop compatible -- "smart boards" for three and four yeaolds in its head-start program. the report also found west las vegas and bernalillo school districts have a k-8 schools. they're on one campus but get more than a half- million dollars of additional state money because on paper they're two different schools -- an elementary and middle school. we stand to lose about 600,000 thousand dollars- 650,000 dollars if we combine those schools and treat each of those campuses as 1 campus. bernalillo bought 3 s-u-v's at higher prices from out of state dealers. they also bought a 91,000 dollar tow truck -- then sold it to the los alamos school district for 75 grand. and they paid cheerleaders and sports teams 3000 bucks to pull weeds... what they are doing is sort of money laundering funding that is supposed to go towards general budget allocation and the classroom and shifting it over to athletics literally on the backs of students picking weeds. as for las vegas and west las vegas- the fact that the city still has 2 school district's and less than 4,000 students, has one senator wondering how thats good for taxpayer i don't know how you can justify 2 school superintendents 1 as a return to work superintendent staffing for that, 2 finance departments one being suspended and taken over by the state. it tells me that the system they have is not functional. overall lawmakers say this report is not going to help school districts dodge the bullet when it comes to budget cuts come january.// about an hour ago--- the secretary of education ised a response to the committee's findings. secretary veronica garcia says she's remmending governor richardson bring up proposed changes in january's legislative session. they include a committee for more oversight on how money is spent.... and how school districts use credit cards  « Less