Saturday, January 12, 2008

Allegations Against Dr. Porter

A Matter of Money?

I found this list of the allegations the OKC School Board has against Dr. Porter. They come from a blog written by Mark Shannon of the local radio station KTOK. The summary includes an explantion of the charges by Robert McCampbell, a former U.S. Attorney hired by the school district to investigate Dr. Porter. Following this, there is a summary of Dr. Porter's response to the allegations.

Allegations Against Dr. Porter

Dr. Porter has offered to make resitution for expenses not allowed by district policy. He claims that he did not have anyone to advise him that he was making unjustifiable claims. If this procedure is a result of a "palace coup" as I have stated in a previous entry, Porter might not have had colleagues willing to steer him in the right direction since they would have a vested interest in seeing him fail.

One thing I have repeatedly stated is that Dr. Porter does not seem to have tried to conceal his actions. Every teacher knows there are many ways to hide the fact that you skimming money. Every teacher knows that handling money of any kind in a achool is always a risk. Many teacher refuse to sponsor any type of school activity because they invaribly involve money. I get the "heebee geebees" when I have to collect funds for things like National Honor Society dues or field trip bus fare.

If Dr. Porter was intentionally grafting money, that would be one thing. But it seems to me that all the allegations dealing with money cited by Mr. McCampbell are reimbursements which McCampbell considers either excessive or unjustified. If that is true, this seems to me to be a correctable error, not a reason for dismissal.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"He (Dr. Porter) claims that he did not have anyone to advise him that he was making unjustifiable claims." Page 2 of the expense report form: http://www.okcps.org/employeecentral/forms/expense_report.pdf
lines out clearly what can and cannot be reported. If he can read, he can advise himeself.

Anonymous said...

http://www.okcps.org/employeecentral/forms/expense_report.pdf

Anonymous said...

Hell, go find it on Employee Central!

Lynn Green said...

If you are trying to post a link, you have to use the HTML codes.