BURKEonBOARD

(Dec. 12, 2008) – It’s still not easy getting a straight answer from the Farmington School District. If you don’t ask precisely the right question, you don’t the right answer, even though they know full well what is being requested.

In any case, after asking the question a couple different ways, and after the district lost the initial request, it appears we now have an answer to question: How much school district taxpayer money was spend trying to keep the superintendent’s contract secret over the course of more than a year and a half.

The answer? Almost $8000 ($7989 to be precise) in attorney’s fees.

I suspect that some administrators and current board members think this is money I caused them to waste (judging from a comment that Terry Donnelly made at the last board meeting). It probably doesn’t occur to them that all that money that someone at the district chose to spend, could have been saved had they simply released the superintendent’s contract in the first place.

I’m curious. Who authorized the district’s attorneys to spend time on this matter? I never heard it discussed at a board meeting. Did the superintendent decide to spend the money keeping his contract secret on his own, or did he get an informal approval from the board chairwoman to do so?

Maybe it will get brought up at the next regular board meeting. I understand there will a couple new board members then.