Higley Schools Blog

Have you been keeping up on the latest mess the district house found itself embroiled in? Hayley Ringle has a good write up about at the East Valley Tribune.

Basically it looks like this is what happened. The district wanted to know how interested people are in renewing the existing budget override that helps pay for the HUSD expenses. So there was talk of paying for a poll in May. But district attorneys warned that any such polling must happen before the override ends up on the ballot. Any polling using public funds after that date is a violation of law. Here is how Hayley explained things next:

In May, Higley board member Kim Anderson asked district officials if the district had done any polling to seek public opinion on support for a budget override election. The issue was then tabled after Giel explained that such polling cannot be done after an election is called.

On June 12, the board was told by Superintendent Joyce Lutrey that a survey was being done, and two community input forums were planned to let the public know about the override. Then, on June 26, the board agreed to ask voters to renew the $4.85 million maintenance and operations budget override.

Anderson said longtime pollster Bruce Merrill told her this week that the district sent an e-mail to him to go ahead with the survey June 30.

The phone survey was then conducted Aug. 8-10, Merrill said.

That was about two weeks after the election was called and more than two months after Giel had warned the board about conducting such a poll after an election is called.

“I believe that at the end of the day, it was staff mismanagement to blame, not Bruce Merrill or ASU,” said Anderson, who has been investigating the issue. “The buck stops with Joyce Lutrey, and this board has not held her accountable.”

Lutrey did not return a phone call Friday for comment.

Ouch.

I’ll keep you posted on this one. It looks like it won’t be disappearing quickly.