Hefty expenses for strapped school district

SFUSD honchos spent more than $84,000 on meals and travel

By Tali Woodward

› tali@sfbg.com

San Francisco's school superintendent and Board of Education spent at least $84,701 in district funds on travel and meals in 2005, according to recently released records.

Departing superintendent Arlene Ackerman's expenses show she ran up more than $45,000 in charges on a single Diners Club corporate account last year. The charges include plane tickets, stays in luxury hotels, and dozens upon dozens of meals. Several thousand dollars have been repaid by nonprofit entities or by Ackerman herself, but the school district has picked up the vast majority of charges.

During the same period of time, the seven members of the Board of Education racked up expenses totaling $39,076. More than a quarter of that was spent by veteran board member Jill Wynns, according to a breakdown provided by the San Francisco Unified School District (see chart). Wynns spent $11,154 on travel and $871 on meals or transportation.

"I'm active in all the organizations we participate in and derive great benefit from," Wynns said. "I think it's an advantage to the district." As an example, Wynns pointed to her lobbying on behalf of a state law passed last year, which she said will save the district more than $1 million a year.

Board members Norman Yee and Eric Mar spent $7,071 and $3,919, respectively. The remaining four board members each spent less that $1,000.

The San Francisco Unified School District has not released detailed information about board members' expenditures, but it disclosed that an additional $12,140 was spent during 2005 on food for school board meetings.

MORTON'S AND JARDINI & EGRAVERE

Expense reports filed by government employees are always available to the public, but soon after board member Sarah Lipson asked to see statements for Ackerman's Diners Club account, the superintendent hired an attorney who specializes in employment discrimination and threatened to sue board members for "harassment."

The most extravagant charges to Ackerman's account revolve around a group trip to Washington, DC, last September for the annual awards ceremony put on by the Broad Foundation. The SFUSD was named a finalist for the Broad award and was awarded $125,000 in scholarship money.

Expenses incurred on that trip — which totaled more than $5,000 — include hotel charges of more than $3,500, two dinners at Morton's steak house, costing $789 and $277, another $559 meal, and $144 for airport parking. It does not appear from the records that the Broad Foundation covered any of these expenses, although district staffers said at the time that Broad picked up other costs for Ackerman, four other administrators, and then-president of the school board Eric Mar.

Many of the other meal and hotel charges recorded in these documents are fairly conservative: a $70 lunch here, a $160 hotel room there. Heftier charges include $1,223 for a two-night stay at a Marriott hotel in San Diego during a National School Boards Association event last April ($718 for the room, $75 for room service, and $430 in other meals), a $1,564 plane ticket to Washington, DC, and six meals at San Francisco's Jardinière totaling more than $1,000.

The federal government limits how much employees may spend on business travel. In 2005 the daily maximum for meals and lodging was $177 in San Francisco, $180 in San Diego, and $204 in Washington, DC. San Francisco city government follows the federal guidelines, Controller Ed Harrington told the Guardian, and does not issue credit cards to employees. Mayor Gavin Newsom, according to Harrington's office, was reimbursed a grand total of $2,265.69 for travel expenses in fiscal 2004 and 2005.

Lipson told us the school board should consider setting per diem rates for employees and for themselves. Given the district's grim finances, she said, "I think every board member needs to be cognizant of this."

POWER LUNCHES

The records indicate Ackerman used district plastic for meals with powerful local figures including producer-philanthropist Carole Shorenstein-Hayes, former San Francisco Chamber of Commerce president Lee Blitch, and San Francisco Chronicle education reporter Heather Knight. She's also picked up the tab for more than a dozen meals with Wynns, at a cost to the district of more than $1,000.

The records don't show who accompanied Ackerman during other "working" meals totaling more than $3,500.

Nonprofits including the American Enterprise Institute and Harvard University have reimbursed some travel expenses incurred by Ackerman. She has also written checks to the SFUSD on several occasions to cover personal expenses charged to the card. The most recent check covers eight separate charges dating back to February 2005 and was signed Jan. 31, 2006 — a week after Lipson officially requested the documents.

In the days since this information began to come out, some people have suggested the expenses are unseemly — particularly when the district is struggling financially.

In the past year, the SFUSD has voted to close or merge more than a dozen schools and is currently at a standstill in negotiations with the union representing teachers, who haven't received a raise in four years.

When we called teachers union president Dennis Kelly about the SFUSD expenses, he told us he is more frustrated by all the working lunches charged to the district than by the travel expenses. "If I'm talking to staff here and we go out and have lunch we don't call it a 'business lunch' and charge it to the union."

But Kelly said what the SFUSD really needs is "somebody who's going to do the oversight — and who's not on the lunch list. They spend money on what they want instead of on what the employees need." *

Research assistance by Amanda Witherell

EXPENSE ACCOUNTING: WHAT SFUSD BOARD MEMBERS SPENT IN 2005

Sarah Lipson: $206.49

Mark Sanchez: $829.91

Eddie Chin: $898.80

Dan Kelly: $985.80

Eric Mar: $3,919.00

Norman Yee: $7,071.19

Jill Wynns: $12,026.45