Keys schools to review drill-team bank records

Key West parents whose daughters are on the high school’s popular drill team, the Conchettes, want a full accounting done on the group’s fundraising dollars, according to a Monroe County School Board member.

The complaint from at least one parent is that the Conchettes’ leader hasn’t provided answers to their questions about the group’s money.

“On multiple occasions after multiple promises, this accounting has not been forthcoming,” said School Board member Ed Davidson, who the unidentified parent called.

In response to the recent complaint, the School District, which is working on the district’s upcoming fiscal budget, will review all of the group’s bank records, said Finance Director Jim Drake.

“The request is somewhat non-specific,” Drake said Tuesday. “We’re going to go back and review all the documentation and make sure it reconciles.”

Drake on Tuesday was working on the budget and didn’t have the current bank balance for the Conchettes, a drill team started in 1955.

In the Florida Keys, any question that concerns school money registers on the public’s radar, as the community still remembers the 2009 embezzlement scandal that sent an administrator to prison and led to the removal of her elected superintendent-husband.

In an email to administrators, Davidson said the parent told him he called “because of my prior objections to cover-ups and the demands for accountability they watched me make on TV during board discussions of the HOB day care fund scandal.”

The day-care scandal at Horace O’Bryant School — $20,739 went missing — led to the principal’s removal to a new district job and a five-day unpaid suspension for him, Drake, HOB’s bookkeeper and Superintendent Mark Porter over their handling of the matter.

Davidson added the district has “thoroughly used up its quota for leniency and cover-ups.”

This story was originally published July 13, 2016 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Keys schools to review drill-team bank records."