School Board Rep Kim Bridges Speaks Out on the Audit

As a recipient of the Mary Munford PTA emails, I received this message from our school board rep, Kim Bridges. Sounds like she’s taking things in the right direction. What do you think?

Message From Kim Bridges, 1st District Representative to the RPS School Board
Dear 1st District community and other RPS stakeholders,

As you know, the long-awaited results of the city auditor’s review of RPS Purchasing and Accounts Payable came out last week. As you also know, it wasn’t pretty. After a preliminary review, it’s been my weekend study, and with the turn of nearly every page my heart sank. Now, the only bright side of this audit is that the school board and superintendent had requested this audit last April and began the revamping of Finance & Operations six months ago. Lots of change has taken place since then and I highlighted some of that in my last update. For the audit, we knew that the findings would be very similar to the audit of the city’s procurement services, so the superintendent and interim chief of Finance and Operations started work on many recommendations well before the audit was done. As a result, 21 of the 102 recommendations have already been addressed and a plan is in place for over half of the recommendations to be implemented by summer.

If you’ve read any of my previous updates, you know I am a huge supporter of public education and of RPS in particular. I have two children in the school system because I truly believe that they can get a wonderful education here and have opportunities equal to or greater than their peers in surrounding systems or private schools. I know many other families like my own who have chosen to be a part of this school system for the same reason.

Over the past fifteen months, I have found and worked for progress in RPS. I believed (and still do) that this system is at the tipping point of a much brighter future. Yet, being proud of this system is a difficult prospect when the community’s predominant mental picture is one of corruption, incompetence, fraud, or waste.

I don’t often use the first person in school board meetings because every decision we make must be a collaborative one. Taking personal credit doesn’t do too much to advance our work, but taking personal responsibility does. I want you to know that I am responsible as a leader of an environment where corruption, incompetence, fraud or waste can pervade such a major function of the system. I am responsible for having the internal controls in place to catch errors before they become regular practice. And to the thousands of kids, parents, mentors, teachers, principals, and support staff who show up everyday to do their best to build something worthy of pride, I am sorry.

I assure you that I will work hard, with my colleagues, to fix this mess. In the near term:

Today at 1:30, the newly-formed Internal Audit committee, to which I was appointed chair, will identify what we need to do to have a “systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of the system’s risk management, control, and governance processes” (decription from the Institute of Internal Auditors.)

Tonight (Monday) at 6:00 p.m., the board will produce its audit response plan.

Thursday at 2:30 p.m., the administration will update the board and public about its improvement steps at a special meeting of the Facilities and Operations committee.

Many more changes are ahead for RPS. I vow to do my best to ensure that change means progress—not just change for appearance sake—and that the stability and confidence our staff and students need will accompany the necessary improvements.

I value your feedback; your suggestions and assistance are more crucial than ever to help replace negative images with positive reality–Kim Bridges, 1st District School Board representative