Atlanta Public Schools has a big problem. It can't put its hands on thousands of pieces of equipment that's either, missing, stolen or simply misplaced. The school district is now paying an outside agency nearly 1 million dollars to track it down.
We spent weeks trying to get a handle on all of the missing items. We got out hands on documents that told the story. What we found were nearly 24 hundred items at just 8 schools that have not been located. Equipment such as washers and dryers, computers, laptops, DVD players, flat screen TVs and the list goes on and on. We also examined burglary and theft reports and found various reporting problems in keeping track of stolen property. We're told the equipment that is unaccounted for could be valued in the millions of dollars.
So what's going on? Chief Financial Officer Chuck Burbridge was hired by the district in 2007 to clean up a mess in the accounting department after the school district failed an audit. He got approval to hire an out of state firm, called Maximus, based in Reston, VA to help him fix the problems. We're told the school district has a billion dollars in assets to track but has not had a proper accounting of the items. Maximus had completed the job of locating and documenting property valued at more than 5 thousand dollars but had not been successful in locating equipment valued less than 5 grand. Burbridge asks, "Is it just missing, is it disposed of or is it in another location?" He wants to know and has tasked school principals and staff to locate the items.
When the Center for Investigative Action found out about it we discovered that even after 9 months, thousands of missing items had not been located. We asked why? We also asked if they could locate them and then show us where they were. After our investigation and interview with Burbridge, work was stepped up.
We were told about 300 missing items from Grady High had been located. However, much of it in found in warehouses instead of classrooms. We asked to be shown these items that were found and put school district to the test by randomly selecting serial numbers of computers that were not found at Grady, where they were originally supposed to be, but rather at Inman Middle School. We were able to put our hands on them. There are 100 schools in the district and only 8 have been audited so there is a long way to go. As they move forward the APS may find they have a lot of equipment that is still missing and unaccounted for but says systems are now in place to make sure they don't lose track of it again.
To see the list of missing items click on each one below. Then click on the list that shows the items that have been found.
(Items that are missing are called exception reports, meaning they have not been located.)
Booker T Washington High School
