As if City of Monroe Schools didn’t have enough problems, apparent thievery at the top now seems to be complemented by mismanagement at the bottom–all while the district remains burdened with minimal, if not deteriorating, academic progress.

Over the past year, the District has been rocked by allegations that former Superintendent Brent Vidrine defrauded it on two occasions. As part of his contract, he was allowed to buy more service time for retirement, but he allegedly forged documents to show he paid more than he did to receive the benefit. He has since been indicted but has repaid $20,000 and retired last year, even as the District appears to have been shorted over $48,000 more. Still unresolved are unauthorized extra payments according to his contracts totaling more than $141,000 during his decade-long tenure.

Perhaps this activity was so under the radar that the Monroe City School Board failed to detect it through normal oversight. Last year’s audit led the Board to promise closer scrutiny of superintendent reimbursements. However, its handling of spending in student activity accounts doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the current Board is capable of getting it right.

The 2023 audit revealed dozens of instances of improper use of these funds – which are designed to support a specific school activity to be used according to the purpose for which it was generated or for the purposes selected by the depositing entities and spent for the benefit of all or any of the school’s students, faculty, staff, facility, or program provided the ledger reflects the expenditure – across a majority of the district’s schools. The District had already promised in the AY 2022 audit to implement safeguards, yet nothing changed. In fact, ten schools reported negative balances in at least one fund—something that should be impossible unless improper or undocumented expenditures occurred.

The District concurred with the findings and promised corrective action. So, what happened in AY 2024, with that audit released last month? Even more schools and funds had negative balances, and the District’s response was cut-and-pasted from the previous year’s audit. And, as in previous years, the District couldn’t complete audits on time. At least it appears to have resolved issues related to questionable federal grant expenditures.

To make matters worse, district-wide academic performance has seen little improvement under Vidrine’s tenure. In 2013, it was a borderline C/D ranked district, but by 2024 it had crept a little way into C territory (the constituent components and their weighing changed somewhat over time, so the comparison isn’t quite exact). Worse, since the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, its performance has slightly declined from 2019 levels, even as Louisiana schools as a whole were winning plaudits for having perhaps led the nation in standardized test score recovery.

Perhaps most worrisome, the current grade of 73 is as high as it is only because of the progress component to it, scored as a low B. The actual assessment indicator was well below the D level.

Finally, like school districts across the state, Monroe is technically insolvent—to the tune of $100 million—because of backloaded pension and post-employment benefits that will come due over the next two decades or so. Over the next ten years, it will be forced to contribute roughly three times its required payments in an attempt to fix the issue. That money can come only from some combination of higher taxes, spending cuts, or depleting reserves, and even that might not be enough to prevent future financial trouble.

The district’s persistent failure to get it together over the past decade reflects poorly on the School Board. Failure to make real progress on administrative issues this academic year might not endear its members to voters when elections come around next year.