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An external state audit of the Mountain View Whisman School District is moving ahead, with the state and county reaching an agreement on Friday, Nov. 15, about the scope of the review.
The state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) signed a study agreement with the Santa Clara County Office of Education for FCMAT to conduct an “extraordinary audit” of Mountain View Whisman. This is a type of review that is meant to investigate potential fraud, misappropriation of funds or other illegal fiscal activity.
Near the end of September, Santa Clara County’s then-superintendent of schools referred Mountain View Whisman to FCMAT for an extraordinary audit. Friday’s agreement marks FCMAT’s formal decision to conduct the audit.
Mountain View Whisman has faced substantial scrutiny in recent months over various spending decisions. Parents have raised particular objections to the district signing a six-figure contract with someone who describes herself as a “certified master energy healer” to provide meditation sessions to district staff.
Other controversial expenses include paying for executive leadership coaching for top administrators, including hiring Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph’s boss from a prior job as his coach. Rudolph resigned from Mountain View Whisman earlier this month.
The district has since canceled these and other controversial contracts.
The agreement for FCMAT to do the audit states that the agency will review and test the district’s “expenditures and internal controls for vendor selection, contracted services and governing board approval to determine whether the district was involved in any undisclosed or inappropriate related-party transactions that were in conflict with state and local policies and standards, or that violated conflict-of-interest laws.”
The audit will look at transactions from the 2022-23 fiscal year to the present. The agreement doesn’t specify which transactions FCMAT plans to review.
FCMAT Chief Executive Officer Mike Fine told the Voice that the allegations include that the district entered into no-bid contracts with associates of the former superintendent, as well as that the district had multiple contracts with the same vendor using different company names. Fine noted that this isn’t necessarily illegal, but that one question is whether this was disclosed appropriately and whether board policies were followed.
According to Fine, a major piece of FCMAT’s work will be deciphering whether the district simply made poor spending decisions or actually violated laws or policies.
“There is no question that some of the expenditures are just simply stupid,” Fine said. “The question that we are left to answer is: Are some of those expenditures contrary to board policy or illegal or have conflicts associated with them? Just because something’s stupid doesn’t mean it’s illegal.”
In this case, Fine said that there were mixed answers on whether the allegations rose to the level of an extraordinary audit, but that one reason FCMAT decided to move forward was because the county superintendent requested it.
The county superintendent has the authority to ask for an extraordinary audit, and Fine said that FCMAT typically doesn’t decline these requests. He added that the district has taken the issue seriously and has also been reviewing the contracts.
Extraordinary audits are uncommon. In the 2023-23 fiscal year, FCMAT conducted these reviews of just four school districts and three charter schools statewide, according to a FCMAT report.
A representative from the Santa Clara County County Office of Education declined to comment on the audit.
Mountain View Whisman Interim Superintendent Kevin Skelly said that each year an outside auditor reviews the district’s finances, and that the district has received clean audits for the past decade.
“We expect a similar result with the FCMAT audit,” Skelly said. “If FCMAT has any recommendations after their audit, we will be eager to implement them.”
FCMAT’s agreement with the county specifies that the audit report will either recommend or not recommend that the county superintendent notify the school board, district attorney and state officials that “sufficient evidence exists to indicate that fraud, misappropriation of funds or other illegal fiscal practices may have occurred.”
The cost of the audit is listed at no more than $65,000. FCMAT will bill the county for the costs of the audit, but the county can then apply for state reimbursement, Fine said.
Given FCMAT’s current workload, Fine said he doesn’t anticipate a team will begin work before the end of the calendar year. He added that the situation would be more urgent if money was still being paid on the contracts in question, but that the district has been taking action to stop that spending.
Once work does begin, FCMAT’s goal is to provide their report to the county within 180 days, Fine said.
“There is no question that some of the expenditures are just simply stupid,”
Mr Fine seems like a real class act.
Well, actually, it sounds pretty accurate. Rudolph made some pretty stupid decisions all around.
Yeah but that clown shouldn’t be blabbing to the press like this. It calls to question the legitimacy and the impartiality of the FCMAT process.
Yeah. I think some of the new principal hires this year are terrible. Really stupid decision on his part.