'Poorly built budget': Wauwatosa School District starts new school year off with multi-million-dollar mistake

 

WAUWATOSA, Wis. (CBS 58) -- The Wauwatosa School District is starting off the new school year with a $4 million budgeting error.

This comes on the heels of other budget mistakes seen in both the Milwaukee Public School District and the Glendale-River Hills School District.

In a board meeting Thursday, newly hired Chief Financial Officer Scot Ecker called what his predecessor left a "poorly built budget."

Ecker said the district spent roughly $8 million more than what was reported in the 2023-2024 budget.

“It’s important to note that these expenses, while the budget was built poorly, all of the expenses were things approved by the board," Ecker said. 

After starting in this role seven weeks ago, Ecker said he's also found a $4.2 million error.

“The budget was never updated with those most current figures," Ecker said. “From what I can tell, there was no alert given to the board, the cabinet, the superintendent, I don’t know why.”

While they're still working to figure out how to bridge the gap, Ecker said his team has already begun implementing new methods to make sure it doesn't happen again.

“We’re implementing a new board report, with both a narrative and projections, we’ll have a quarterly financial report that’s going to show a projection each quarter of where we anticipate the year to end," Ecker said. "We’ve added some internal controls in my office, so we’re going to have triangulation among multiple people of budget actual reports, and we’ve invested in a new software that also is focused on financial projection.”

Ecker said moving forward, transparency is key, and in his 25 years in this field, he's never seen "anything like this."

“There was no misappropriation of funds, nothing nefarious," Ecker said. "It was unfortunately a poorly built budget.”

This mistake comes as the district is asking voters to pass a $16 million referendum this November. If it doesn't pass, the district will have to make more cuts.

In September, the district will figure out exactly how much revenue they have, but the budget will be finalized in October.

To view the recent memorandum, click here.