By: Lewis Michael
Brandi Rutz, a member of the Shenandoah County School Board, has called for a forensic audit into the funds used for the initial name change in 2020. The audit would focus on the $133,000 allocated for renaming the schools that has been labeled as “savings” from special education funding by former SCPS board members The proposed audit timeframe spans from July 2020 to July 20221.
It's been no secret that community members have long questioned the funding sources of the Southern Campus School names in 2022, and those questions still remain unanswered to this day. Seeking some answers to exactly what funds were used and how by the former Superintendent Mark Johnston and his Finance Director, Demetria Brown has been a long time coming. Former School Board Member Michelle Manning had formed a non-profit organization associated with United Charities that she “hoped” would raise enough money to fund the name changes on its own. That never came to fruition, however and Shenandoah County taxpayers were left to foot the bill. The amount of money raised via donations was roughly $34,000 out of $304,000 according to SCPS records.
That left $270,000 to be used from the budget in 2021 to fund the controversial name changes. The monies spent were used for the names while the Shenandoah County Public Schools had long lists of Special Education Program needs and capital improvement necessities. One must ask if they found ways to pay for the name changes, how and why they couldn’t have done the same creative shucks and jives to fund more important and obvious school needs across Shenandoah County?
One thing is for sure, Board Members Manning, Walsh, Whetzel, Kline, and Keller didn’t have much to say in regards to spending over 300 thousand dollars when they allowed Mark Johnston to follow through with this plan. Only former Board Member Marty Helsley asked about the funding and was largely ignored by the rest of the board at that time. No coincidence at all that those same Board Members kept him out of the communications about the upcoming name change vote in 2020 until the last possible moment in order to keep feedback to a minimum.
The community deserves answers to these public funding questions and this audit will hopefully shed light on exactly what was done. Donations are one thing, but this was earmarked money for the students of Shenandoah County that was used elsewhere.
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