Columnist Dean Juipe: CCSD abuses undercut kids, sports

Dean Juipe

Monday, Dec. 1, 2003 | 9:36 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Walking out of the supermarket Saturday, my wife couldn't resist putting her pocket change in the bucket manned by a bell-ringing, costumed waif.

"Why?" I defiantly muttered. "So some executive can live a life of luxury?"

It was a callous comment and not one I generally adhere to, giving, as I do, on at least an occasional basis to similar causes even in the aftermath of a United Way scandal that had everyone re-evaluating their philanthropic habits.

But she's a soft touch and I knew she would scrounge up a few nickels and dimes, not only taking me off the hook but causing the bell ringer to nod in appreciation. A day later I thought of her magnanimous gesture again while reading how the Clark County School District was back in the business of uncovering financial fraud that was, in part, derived from contributions to various schools' athletic funds.

No one likes to give to something only to find the money is being deviously redirected, whether it's spare change for a makeshift Santa or some CCSD executive with his hand in the till.

This may be nothing more than a poor man's Enron, but confiscating money brought in by athletics and using it in some other manner is equally distasteful and mean spirited in its own way.

In the school district's case, an internal audit uncovered abuses ranging from $1,600 to $52,376 on assorted campuses. The money was raised by various student activities, including gate receipts from sporting events, and was used to fund a number of wholly unacceptable causes.

This comes just a few months after an earlier audit -- pertaining to the finances of an annual high-school basketball tournament in Las Vegas that literally draws hundreds of teams -- revealed that the supervisor of the event, a CCSD employee and athletic-department director, may have left his integrity, if not his bookkeeping skills, at the door. Auditors were sufficiently baffled that they threw up their hands in dismay, unable to pinpoint precisely what had been lost.

Larceny seems especially ignoble anytime there are kids and sports involved, and this latest round of audits underscores the need for better accounting practices throughout the CCSD. The dollars collected at the gates of football, basketball and volleyball games may not amount to much on a per-event basis but they add up over time, as the depth of these alleged abuses show.

You don't want to throw your quarters in a bucket for the homeless only to find they're actually going to some big-shot's new Mercedes, and you don't want money targeted for high-school sports to go to some principal's gardener or lackey. You want to give your two bits and trust that it will go toward helping a poor guy get a bed for the night or to the kids on the playing field, if not the classroom.

Deceit is fine if you're running a misdirection play for a football team, but when it involves reappropriating money intended to support and fund amateur sports, it's more than a little revolting.

Besides, people feel like suckers when stories like these surface and they may be less inclined to give again in the future.

Or they may just hand a buck to a nomad with a sign on a bridge and let him do as he pleases, rather than trust a middleman cloaked as a Good Samaritan to deliver the funds.