Some districts may need a lesson in frugality

OLYMPIA – A 19-month review of 2006 school district travel expenses found staffers dining on $50 meals, staying in $299 rooms, and spending nearly $50,000 for hotel rooms that were never used.

Such cases were unusual, according to the performance audit released Wednesday by state Auditor Brian Sonntag. But it says tighter travel rules could save cash-strapped school districts more than $1 million over the next five years.

Thirteen districts around the state, including many of the state’s largest, were examined. Almost none had a policy encouraging carpooling to conferences and retreats. None limited car rentals to economy cars. And while most of the districts required hotel costs to be reasonable, Sonntag said, there was “a large variance in the way ‘reasonable’ is interpreted.”

Travel constitutes only a tiny slice – less than a third of 1 percent – of the more than $8 billion school districts spend each year in Washington. But reducing travel costs, the report notes, would free up more dollars to educate kids.

“Moreover,” the report says, “the public expects government agencies to spend their tax dollars in an economical and prudent manner, no matter the dollar value of the transaction. The simple appearance of luxurious accommodations can cause the public to question whether their tax dollars are being wasted.”

Overall, auditors found, many of the districts are doing a good job of ensuring that staff travel is economical. The audit found no one flying first-class or even business class. Most meals and car rentals were economical. And some districts saved thousands of dollars by having staffers share hotel rooms. Two Spokane assistant principals, for example, saved taxpayers $1,110 that way.

Spokane Public Schools, in fact, turned out to be one of the most economical districts studied. The district spent about $1.2 million on travel in 2006. Auditors scrutinized about $134,000 of that. Less than 9 percent, they said, was “excess” cost.

The district attributed some of that cost to a state contract quirk limiting its use of a special rate on Spokane airfares. It also said it would tell district employees to ask for the government rate when booking hotels.

In the Central Valley School District, which spent about $387,000 on travel that year, excess costs represented about 15 percent of the roughly $36,000 examined by auditors, the report says.

That was mainly because of hotel costs at conferences, said Jan Hutton, Central Valley’s finance director. Conferences typically take place in big cities, she said, and offer valuable after-hours networking that makes it worthwhile to stay at conference hotels even if they’re a bit more costly. In recent years, she said, retreats have typically been one-day events held within the school district.

The audit also identified thousands of dollars in questionable spending elsewhere in the state:

•Lakewood’s Clover Park School District spent more than $82,000 to have 165 district employees attend at least one of six retreats at a Hood Canal resort and spa. Although the federal lodging rate was $60 a night at the time, the district paid $48 to $215 a night more than that. The district has since retooled its policies, and this spring it canceled all overnight retreats.

•Vancouver Public Schools spent nearly $19,000 to send nine people to a national conference in Chicago. Dinners consisted of $48 meals at a steakhouse one night, and $52 meals of lobster, crab cakes and bouillabaisse the next.

The district says costs were high because of a last-minute conference move from hurricane-battered New Orleans to Chicago. To save money, Vancouver officials said, they tightened travel limits and skipped the 2007 conference.

•Seattle Public Schools spent $3,000 to send a principal to South Africa to visit schools and collect cultural information. But the district could provide little documentation breaking down the expenses, such as lodging. There was nothing to indicate the type of flights or hotels, the business purpose of the trip, or the necessary school board approval.

The district says it is retooling its travel rules to require more documentation justifying trips and detailing expenses.

•One of the biggest questionable expenses listed in the state audit involved a 2005 statewide conference on educating migrant and bilingual children. The state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction grossly overestimated attendance, contracting for large blocs of rooms at two hotels. But of the 970 “room-nights” reserved, 499 were unused. The cost of those vacant rooms: $49,166.

And the same thing had happened two years earlier. For the 2003 conference, OSPI had contracted for nearly $19,000 worth of hotel rooms that weren’t needed.

“OSPI made a contract with the hotels and they did not cancel the rooms in time. It was up to OSPI to coordinate and contact the hotels and whatnot,” said Lee Campos, director of the Sunnyside-based Migrant Student Data and Recruitment Office, which organized the conferences. He said the money was paid with the previous year’s registration fees. The conference had not been held since.

“We did make a mistake with this one,” confirmed Nathan Olson, an OSPI spokesman. He said the rules have been changed to avoid a repeat.

“We’ve learned our lesson,” he said.