Shine light on school district credit card use

What happens when school district employees are given a credit card, are told they cannot charge more than $20,000 per month, but no one supervises their use?

The answer is that an estimated total of approximately $30 million will be charged by 51 Beaufort County School Districtd employees in FY2017 according to a recent letter to the editor. If you do the math, the maximum permitted should not exceed $12.24 million per year.

So why doesn’t superintendent Jeff Moss exercise more supervision over his employees’ credit card charges — an amount that is almost 14 percent of the district’s operation budget?

Every dollar potentially misspent using these 51 credit cards is a dollar that cannot be allocated to increasing teachers’ salaries.

Moss has stated that improving academic achievement is his goal. He should post a list of all credit card users on the district website along with monthly charges for each user. Trust but verify.

If the superintendent does not demonstrate more rigorous supervision, our school board should. If our school board does not, then the Beaufort County Council should, as it is vested with the authority/responsibility to review and adopt the school district’s operating budget. Trust but Verify.

This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 2:06 PM with the headline "Shine light on school district credit card use."