Jesus, it’s not bad enough the rap city schools get? It’s not bad enough, lack of funds? Now the State’s Attorney General’s office has filed a lawsuit against a former chief financial officer to the Rochester City Schools, Henry Marini, for allegedly dirty deals with his buddies:

AG sues over city schools’ contracts || Democrat & Chronicle: Local News

The lawsuit claims that the Perrys and Spier, with Marini’s help, got 13 consulting city contracts under seven different company names. Twelve of those contracts were for amounts of $24,000 to $24,900 ? just beneath the $25,000 threshold that requires school board approval. The state alleges that was done to evade review. District officials said, in a news release e-mailed to the media, that the district has assisted state officials during the 18-month inquiry.

Marini quit his $160,000 anual salary job with no severance just prior to the start of the investigation. I guess he figured he’d just be in the way. . . .

I don’t know a thing about the Rochester City Schools or their ills first-hand, though I know a few people at MJ that have been working on funding parity for the schools. I’m not sure what would make the situation better, though clearly, there needs to be some sort of genuine reform in the school before they add more money into the mix.

I do wonder what oversite measures the state has in place for these things. Certainly, the City could stand some security, itself, but this is state money. According to the article, this particular graft was caught by a local teacher. Kudos for him, but where is the oversite? $25,000 is a lot of money not to be paid attention to, how could the Rochester City School District let such large sums of money go unaccounted for and then bitch about teacher salaries?

Technorati Tags: Rochester, Schools, Marini

powered by performancing firefox