Swampscott SPED Dept. under scrutiny

SWAMPSCOTT – An audit of the special education department is an indictment of former business office employees not the current administrative team, according to school district officials.The audit covered the period when Michael Tarlow was the assistant superintendent/business manager for the district and, according to School Business Manager Ed Cronin, the issues happened under Tarlow’s watch.?Many of the problems identified were attributable to financial management or mismanagement in the Swampscott Public Schools Business Office during the period the auditors examined,” he said.?At first read, it would appear that this entire audit report is an indictment on the lack of fiscal management within the business office at that time. The report tells me that the SPED office has taken all of the corrective steps to ensure a good, cost effective education for our students but they were not supported in any way by the business office.”Irregularities mentioned in the audit include improper accounting procedures, accounting errors and creation of unbudgeted positions. Another issue raised in the audit is failure of the business office to put transportation for SPED students out to bid, which is something SPED Director Maureen Bingham said has been corrected.According to Bingham and Cronin, the other deficiencies raised by the audit have been corrected and the department is ready to move forward using proper accounting and budgeting procedures.According to the audit report, the number of SPED students in Swampscott has remained consistent over the last few years and there are currently 380 SPED students in the district, which is approximately 15 percent of the total student population.According to the report, SPED costs in town have been in line with the state average. The auditors did not find excessive tuitioning out of students to other districts or private schools. There were 32 students placed in schools outside of the district and 13 of those were at the Northshore Education Consortium, to which Swampscott belongs.