Kent Fisher offers an interesting chronology/analysis in the DMN, establishing that the $64 million budget overrun really originated years ago with slopping accounting, slopping budgeting, sloppy hiring and a bureaucracy seemingly too large to figure all of that out. It’s a good read, and it’s a story that could very well have impacted how people think about the current situation had it been written a few weeks ago.

The story, which you can read for yourself by clicking here, explains that some of the problems originated before Supt. Michael Hinojosa took the reins, and others were compounded when Hinojosa and his people either didn’t react quickly enough to issues as they cropped up.
Does the evidence add up to culpability on the part of Hinojosa, or does it give him cover and an opportunity to clear the slate and start over?

One other comment, which DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander pointed out to me recently after I asked him about my idea of having the board hire a CFO that reports directly to the board, rather than the superintendent. Dahlander pointed out that the district’s internal auditor does report directly to the board (and not the superintendent), and the auditor has been "tasked with conducting a post-mortem on the cause o the deficit." That report could eventually provide additional information about how we arrived at this spot, and it could prove out some of the issues addressed in Fisher’s story.