Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services

Fort Smith (Mar 11/02) - South Slave's school board is centralizing financial reporting, after $60,000 was stolen.

The embezzlement was discovered in October.

Small amounts of money were taken over five years from a Fort Smith District Education Authority (DEA) office.

No charges have been laid and RCMP are still investigating.

The decentralized setup of school system finances contributed to making the theft possible, superintendent Curtis Brown says in a report.

South slave communities covered by the SSDEC have local boards called district education authorities.

They "are single-person operations, leaving us exposed to considerable possibility for costly mistakes and fraudulent activities," Brown's monthly report says.

Efforts to make communities autonomous have made finances "somewhat defenceless."

The South Slave school system is the NWT's most decentralized, with the bulk of education funding flowing directly to the local level.

Following the theft, the Fort Smith District Education Authority moved the administration of local payroll and benefits to SSDEC's main Fort Smith office.

A finance report recommends the same be done with all DEAs, and calls for more centralized administration and tighter reporting requirements to the main school board office.

Hay River District Education Authority chair Andrew Butler said the centralization plan "goes against all the recommendations for developing capacity at a community level."

"How do you do that by not allowing the communities to do anything?"

The SSDEC points out having two sets of audits is expensive. Those at local levels are not full audits, but decentralization adds $120,000 a year to administration costs.

Butler counters "it can be cheaper to centralize finances but so would it be to have just one school board out of Yellowknife."