If you want a critical eye to be cast by the News-Gazette at any school board, it's not going to be done by Anne Cook.
Her article today in the News-Gazette almost makes heroes out of John Alumbaugh and the rest of the cast of characters in the Mahomet School Board who have squandered millions with little to show for it. Alumbaugh's chief claim to being fiscally prudent is that he now buys his own newspaper. If he starts filling his own candy dish on his desk than maybe we should make him the state budget director.
What you won't read in the article is that Mahomet is not covered by tax caps, unlike Champaign, Urbana, Rantoul, Unity, and most other school districts in the county.
You also don't hear a word in the article about the fat pay raises that Alumbaugh got that will pad his upcoming retirement.
You see a chart showing the increase in the education fund. What you won't read is that this averages out to 6.2% a year. Far ahead of inflation.
You won't read a word about the expenditures of the other funds. So while we see a snapshot of the education fund expenditures, we don't have any indication of the overall expenditures and how those have increased.
The MS school district, operating under far less stringent rules than other Champaign County districts, has been a failure. It shows that the best efforts of state government officials can be offset by the incompetence of local administrative staff.
Good luck to the new board president in cleaning up the mess he has inherited.
