Audit finds $196,000 in items missing from 11 schools
City Controller Alan Butkovitz found that a lack of inventory controls was commonplace in the district.
BACK IN AUGUST 2010, a couple of workers at a Kensington pawn shop uncovered a curious crime.
While cleaning 41 Apple laptops, employees found six of them had stickers masking "School District of Philadelphia" identifiers, according to an affidavit. Police were called the next day and the district's Inspector General's Office was notified.
Authorities say they connected the theft of all 41 laptops to an Ethan Allen School teacher, Kathleen Kremis, now 38, and her husband, Thomas Perry, now 40. The couple was arrested and charged in October with conspiracy, receiving stolen property and various other crimes.
No one at Ethan Allen had reported the computers missing to the inspector general. In 2009, two missing laptops were reported to school police, but it wasn't passed along to the IG, who would have investigated, according to an affidavit.
In an audit report released yesterday that covers fiscal year 2012, City Controller Alan Butkovitz found that such a lack of inventory controls was commonplace throughout district schools.
The sample audit found $196,000 in items - snowblowers, musical instruments, furniture, computers and more - was missing from 11 schools. Investigators from the Controller's Office couldn't locate 67 percent of the inventory sampled.
District officials "should view all of these [items] as precious resources," Butkovitz said.
In addition, after West Philadelphia High School moved into a new building, auditors found that school property had been left behind at the shuttered building, including textbooks, band uniforms, a grand piano and other musical instruments.
Chief Financial Officer Matthew Stanski defended the district, stating the uniforms weren't moved because the band was disbanded by the new principal. The band is active again and the uniforms are now in the new building, Stanski said. The piano has since moved as well, he added.
"The textbooks left behind were not enough to service a classroom, however, they will be removed and redistributed," the CFO wrote in response.
District spokesman Fernando Gallard said that when schools closed in previous years, items were stored at the closed buildings. But in anticipation of this year's 24 school closings, the district has assembled three teams to move all items to one district building for storage.