In an effort to avoid their responsibility to fund public schools, legislative leaders last week tried to derail things by accusing a single individual of gross mismanagement of funds.
Longtime public servant Dale Dennis, deputy director of education, was targeted as purposely misappropriating transportation funds to school districts over the past 30-plus years.
With a lifetime of service to the Department of Education, Dennis is the go-to person for every superintendent of school in the state when it comes to explaining school finance.
In fact, he’s so well respected that come graduation, one of the most esteemed awards given to a graduating senior is the Dale M. Dennis Excellence in Education Award, which recognizes a student’s good citizenship, service and scholarship.
How did that criteria get set? By example, of course.
If only our legislators were made of the same stuff.
Instead, Susan Wagle, Senate president, and Ron Ryckman, House speaker, have made Mr. Dennis their scapegoat, accusing him of unlawfully allocating transportation funds to larger school districts.
In audit after audit, court case after court case, Mr. Dennis has never been found of foul play.
Until now. More than 30 years after Mr. Dennis was given direction to help devise the school funding formula, including that of transportation, legislators are asking the state attorney general to launch a criminal investigation into the methodology devised by Mr. Dennis.
If Derek Schmidt, our state AG, has any political smarts, he won’t touch this with a 10-foot pole.
And where, one may ask, have legislators and education officials been to have let such an alleged atrocity go unnoticed these past 30 years?
Exactly. Paying attention to real issues.
This is not to say, however, that a flaw in the funding mechanism was not discovered in the legislative audit. It was.
All those years ago Mr. Dennis was given a verbal directive to better equalize transportation services between large and small school districts. So yes, it’s time to put that in writing.
But to jump to conclusions that the funds have been appropriated illegally is beyond the pale.
