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SFUSD Bond Oversight Group Says it Can’t Verify Effectiveness Claims
Sept. 11, 2024 |By Allyson Aleksey | SFExaminer.com

A volunteer, state-mandated oversight committee asked the San Francisco Board of Education to provide more detailed information on previous bond spending as voters weigh in on The City’s largest-ever school bond in November. …
     To support the November bond’s passage, SFUSD officials point at the success of using previous bond funds — totaling $2 billion since 2003 — to deliver promised renovation projects on time and on budget.
     But the Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee, which oversees bond spending on behalf of taxpayers and reports project lists and expenditures to the public, says it doesn’t have the data to say whether the claim is true or false.
     “The [2016, 2011, 2006 and 2003] bonds that have been approved total $2 billion,” CBOC Chair Quincy Yu said. “The district is asking for $790 million more It behooves the Board of Education to ask the question: When and if that bond is approved, what is going to be used for that bond, and how [will it] be budgeted?” 
     CBOC members pointed to San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Matt Wayne’s previous statements that SFUSD has “an excellent track record for the past two decades of delivering bond-funded capital projects on time and on budget,” and said data isn’t available to support those characterizations.
     “We would very much like to know the data and analysis that underlie that claim, because it’s not clear to us,” CBOC Vice Chair Patrick Wolff said.
     The committee pointed to similar sentiments the Board of Education expressed last year, when commissioners were exploring a massive $1 billion bond, which was ultimately downsized and pushed to this November’s ballot. …
     Yu, in a presentation to Board of Education commissioners Tuesday, said timely audit reporting on renovation projects that use bond funds was available “only recently.” “We have been told [by district officials] often that transparent, quarterly reporting has not been done, [or that] we do not have the data,” she said. “That is unacceptable.” …
     The oversight committee recommended that at least one Board of Education member attend a minimum of one CBOC meeting a year, which Commissioner Alida Fisher said is “a great first start” on building a better relationship between the board and the committee. …
     Despite the lack of transparency around previous bond spending, Wolff told The Examiner that he supports Prop. A and its passage.
     “I think the public can trust and should believe that the district is going to continue to make substantial progress in the management, oversight and reporting of the bonds,” he said.
     Wolff said he wants to bring attention and improve governance and oversight to the bond program, and that “enormous progress” has been made over the last two years. …

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/education/sfusd-bond-spending-questioned-ahead-of-november-election/article_72529a1e-708a-11ef-b7b9-d31a219345ac.html

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