I-Team Investigation: CVUSD faces questions over new headquarters

East Valley residents and some employees are raising questions about The Coachella Valley School District and its spending priorities as it prepares to open a brand new district headquarters building.

In an I-team Investigation, Jeff Stahl looked into a March 21 school board vote to approve $150,000 worth of office furniture for the new district administration building. The purchase comes as the same school district may have to lay off 80 employees because of a $6.8 million budget shortage.

Raul Flores is a district Translator and Interpreter and upset over the money being spent. Flores said, “And alone in the superintendent’s office a total of $21,724.60 just for the superintendent’s office.”

Flores also questions the $92,000 approved to hire an outside company, Desert Moving Co., to move everything in.

Two weeks earlier, the school board voted to possibly lay off 80 staffers due to declining enrollment and its growing budget deficit.

Flores insisted, “the first thing I would say– we don’t we don’t have money for this.” A Coachella resident’s Facebook post asks, “I wonder if our students have leather black chairs too.”

THE I-TEAM examined the purchase order with a Temecula company, Indoff. It lists 12 high-back executive leather chairs for the boardroom, each $628 dollars. More tables and chairs for the new boardroom, plus lounge chairs for the superintendent’s office, each priced at $672 and $886. Then there’s the superintendent’s new desk at $1,388 and executive chair at $525. The total bill for all the furnishings is $150,055 dollars.

“How can you spend that much money on one chair and just come out and tell the employees, ‘sorry we’re laying you off,'” Flores said. “How is that possible? How can they not see the wrong that they’re doing?” Flores added.

Erik Lee, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services responded, “We felt like that was appropriate it was vetted by a committee of people that took a look at it.”

Speaking for the district, Lee says the district is very sensitive to the cuts needed to make the district fiscally solvent.

Lee said, “But any funds spent on furniture come out of the construction fund. They don’t come out of the general fund, so there is no impact on the general fund.”

The district points to measure D passed in 2005 by voters. It was a $250 million bond that’s for construction only, and buildings like the new administration center. Administrators say that this money cannot be spent on salaries.

Lee said bond monies, “are only available for what was specified and what the voters approved. And the bond specifically says they’re not to be used for salaries.”

Lee adds the district’s current office buildings are 40 to almost 50 years old and showing their age. The new building he says is higher tech and state of the art.

“And it presents better than a building with bars on the windows and a little wooden sign,” Lee added.

Flores says top administrators should give back 5% of their pay, and says it’s been done in the past. He also says the district should use its own movers instead of hiring an outside company to move furniture into the new headquarters.

Lee responds, “We don’t have enough of them to move everybody in the short space of time we have to make the move.”

Lee says some departments are being moved with district staff. The big move is set for this month. Lee says the Measure D bond money spent, will be worth it.