HANCOCK COUNTY, W.Va. — Hancock County Schools is in a serious financial hole and Delegate Pat McGeehan says it could have easily been prevented.
Reports say the school system could run out of money by February 1 and McGeehan says that wasn’t just because the county is losing funding from the state school aid formula because enrollment numbers are down.
“This situation is about mismanagement, lack of accounting, and a number of other factors that led to this sudden financial crisis,” McGeehan said Tuesday on MetroNews Talkline.
“The books were just wrong and that’s likely just from gross incompetence. Hopefully it’s nothing more than that, but if nothing changes right now, Hancock County Schools won’t be able to make payroll by early February,” he continued.
McGeehan says he had an hour-long conversation with the CPA that was brought in a couple months ago as an independent auditor. That professional says the issue is so bad that the district may not even make payroll this month.
“Hopefully that doesn’t happen and we’ve got some time here, ” McGeehan said.
According to McGeehan, this is uncharted territory and he’s not even confident the state could help.
“While they could in technically and take over and fire management, that doesn’t really solve the payroll problem for the rest of the fiscal year because all they could do is manage things, fire people that may or not have been incompetent. They don’t have any reserve funds they bring with them. It’s sort of a blind spot in this system,” he said.
The Hancock County Board of Education launched an investigation into the situation. In late November, the board unanimously voted to terminate their chief financial officer.