District officials say they don’t yet know how they’ll use funds recovered through insurance following the theft of nearly $500,000 from school cafeterias over a period of five years.
Asked about plans during a budget hearing last week, the superintendent of schools said the money should remain in a fund where it is now while the criminal justice system processes the cases of two former district employees accused of stealing it.
“Once that is resolved and decided and moved away, I think you and I should sit and talk have that conversation,” Dr. Bryan Luizzi told First Selectman Kevin Moynihan during the Jan. 24 Board of Selectmen meeting, held at Town Hall.
Moynihan asked whether the funds could be used to convert school kitchens to natural gas. South School, Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School now are hooked up, following the first part of a phased implementation plan overseen by Eversource.
Luizzi answered that doing so “certainly seems like an appropriate use.”
“I think that as a result of all that has occurred maybe an under-investment through the years has happened in those areas, so I think reinvesting in those areas like that and doing some other things for the benefit of kids and families in those areas would be well received by everybody,” he said.
The comments came as Luizzi presented the Board of Education’s proposed budget for next fiscal year, a 2.03 percent increase over current spending.
The district received $500,000 through insurance, the limit of the policy.
Sisters Joanne Pascarelli and Marie Wilson, who used to help oversee the food service programs at Saxe and NCHS, respectively, each are free on $50,000 bond following their arrests in August on felony larceny charges. Both have pleaded not guilty. They are next scheduled to appear March 6 in state Superior Court. It’s unclear whether the arrested women also targeted charge accounts kept up by New Canaan parents in order to justify the district’s food costs. Officials have said an auditing professional is examining records.
Typical, governmental bureaucratic response.et’s spend it on x. Unfortunately, our Republican First Selectman gave a typical Democrat response of…’let’s spend it on x,’ in this case the nat gas conversion at the schools.
At least the School Superintendent had the good sense to say put it aside till various investigations are completed, though I am sure he has some spending plans too.
Before we get carried away with spending this money, did anyone ever consider adding it to a town ‘rainy day’ fund to cover future deficits or to otherwise lower the amount that us taxpayers pay to fund our school system, which is superb, by the way?
Some could argue that the theft was not from the Town, but from the families who auto-paid for student lunches that weren’t ever served. I agree with Dr. Luizzi that we need to wait for the investigation to wrap up. If it’s found that the theft was in any way from student “auto replenish” accounts, those funds need to be returned first to those families from whom it was stolen. So let’s not make grand plans to spend it just yet!