Jeffco staff lied to the Board of Education and public regarding how much bond money was put into the ROTS closing schools.
Jeffco staff told everyone that $16,395,891 in bond funds was put into the schools.
Yet, in a September 1, 2022 CORA request Jeffco admitted that the information shown to the Board was incorrect and that the real amount was $18,056,873 due to a “last minute change”. The $18M number matches the sum of the amounts shown in the FCB for the closing schools.
But even after admitting this “error” staff never updated the information shown to the public and kept the $16M figure on their web site. That, in and of itself, is disingenuous and deceptive.
To make matters worse, the $18M isn’t the full amount of money put into the schools. It appeared that Jeffco only included costs associated with Efficiency and Future Ready projects at those schools and not costs associated with District wide projects. Therefore, I submitted a series of CORA requests for the breakout of costs of District wide projects that included the closing schools.
For example, I asked for a breakout of the by-school costs of the H DW Flooring project which included Bergen Meadow.
Jeffco’s CORA response was that this project included flooring that cost $289,188 that was installed at Bergen Meadow. Yet, Jeffco told the Board and the public that $0 of bond money was spent at Bergen Meadow.
This is just another flat-out lie.
To compound the issue there were numerous District wide projects that Jeffco could not or would not provide the by-school cost breakdowns. This prevents an accounting of the full amounts of bond money put into the closing schools. However, from what Jeffco did provide, the costs of District wide projects was more than $5M. Extrapolating for the projects in which costs were not provided means that the total was somewhere between $5M and $10M more than what Jeffco told the Board. This makes it likely that more than $25M of bond money, in total, was put into the closing schools. That is significantly more than the $16M told to the Board and community and taxpayers deserve to know that number.
The bottom line is that Jeffco staff repeatedly and knowingly lied to the Board and public. This is an egregious display of arrogance and deception.
Superintendent Dorland frequently says that she wants trust and transparency, yet she knowingly allows this type of deception to happen and does nothing to fix it. Because of this she is part of the problem and can’t be trusted.
Jeffco schools has a massive integrity and trust problem. There is nothing worse than that. Unfortunately, this problem won’t be fixed until the head of the snake is cut off and another round of cabinet members are fired and replaced with people who value integrity, honesty and transparency above all else.
Never Trust Anything Put Out by Jeffco!