The much-maligned finances and operations of the D.C. Public Schools will undergo a pair of audits by two consulting firms, the results of which should provide Mayor Adrian Fenty some direction as he assumes control of the District’s education system and its $1 billion budget.
One of the auditors, New York-based Alvarez & Marsal, is well known as a brash corporate cost cutter.
“I do anticipate that there will be significant savings found after the review is done and I bet there will be some managerial recommendations coming out of them, all of which I think will be material,” Fenty said. School Board President Robert Bobb and Superintendent Clifford Janey joined Fenty during the news conference outside school system headquarters.
Fenty called the $3.34 million, four-month reviews “an exciting step in the continuing transformation” of public education in the District. The auditors, he said, will be digging for waste and inefficiency.
Alvarez & Marsal could prove a contentious pick as auditor. The consulting firm, which dubs itself a “corporate doctor,” is well-known for turning around the finances of near-bankrupt companies through relentless cost cutting, including pink slips. Controversy has marked its management of the St. Louis and New Orleans school systems.
The company, Bobb said, has made “a lot of hard and tough decisions” and some mistakes along the way. But he endorsed the firm’s body of work and the audits overall.
The second auditor, McKinsey & Co., will focus on school operations.
The reviews will be financed with private donations collected from both local and national sources by the nonprofit D.C. Education Compact. The compact will act as a “fiscal agent” to speed up the process, D.C. Education Compact Executive Director Donna Power Stowe said, but the mayor’s office will oversee the audits.
The audits’ cost should be recovered through savings tied to the consultants’ suggestions, Bobb said. But the mayor’s office, he said, must have “the intestinalfortitude to implement the things that come out of this report.”
Janey, whose future under a Fenty-controlled school system remains a huge question, said he “welcomed” the analysis.
“It’s taking what’s been done, adding a new vision from the mayor’s perspective and fashioning a road map so once the audit is completed it doesn’t go to some bookshelf,” Janey said.
