Sometime in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Carolyn Smith tweeted these words,

“Commission school plan eliminates current Internal Auditor.”

You might not know who Carolyn Smith is. You might not even care, but you should. She’s the current internal auditor for Columbus City Schools.

She’s the one who started investigating school attendance data. She’s the auditor who was pressured to cut her audit short, who endured private questioning by both the board president and superintendent. Smith is the auditor who followed through and did her job anyway. She rendered a 72-page report documenting a system rife with unethical withdrawals, temporary demotions, and data manipulation.

If there’s a hero in the attendance scandal, it’s Smith.

Instead, Smith is the first casualty in the Education Commission’s reform plans. The first winner, meanwhile, is Andy Ginther. As member of the Selection and Oversight Committee, the City Council President picks out the new external auditor for the schools.

It’s ironic that Ginther, a former school board member, led the audit team in 2004 when the first symptoms of the attendance scandal appeared. Somehow, that original 2004 audit was derailed: it just ceased to exist. Somehow, the auditor at the time, Tina Abdella, lost her job at the school district.

And after this, Ginther gets to pick out the new auditor. It would all be funny, if it weren’t so tragic.

Former school board member and CCS parent Steph Groce described the outcome this way: “It’s worrisome that one of the few adults who was willing to stick her neck out for kids gets voted off the island. And others, who seem to have tried to shut her, and those before her, down, get more power.”

She adds, “It’s hard to build credibility that way.”

Of course, things are off to a good start for the Education Commission members themselves. Turns out, there’s a little something for everyone. CSCC gets a piece of the action, as every neighborhood school must partner with a post-secondary institution or program. And commission members with pre-kindergarten programs get the gift of a 2020 (or 2025, depending on how you read it) deadline wherein all children will have had a “high-quality pre-k experience”.

Throughout the pages of the Education Commission reports, there’s plenty of namedropping: seeming inclusive is a good strategy. Steph Groce (educatecolumbus.org), Mike Wiles and several community groups are all mentioned by name as contributing ideas.

Wiles, in fact, got his own footnote:

“The commission is grateful to Columbus School Board member Mike Wiles for suggesting certain improvements to the board’s committee structure and the district’s internal organizations. While we believe that making such detailed recommendations should be left to the further study and action by the newly created public/private partnership, we certainly encourage Mr. Wiles to advance those suggestions and the public/private partnership to consider Mr. Wiles’ suggestions.”

Translation: “Thank you for playing, not really interested”.

Usefully, Wiles’ suggestions are fully online and available to the public. He has 36 ideas. They are, to use the commission’s term, “detailed”. And they’re not written by one of the three marketing teams with which the Education Commission contracted.

Instead, the ideas are written by a man who went to Columbus City Schools, who sent his children to Columbus City Schools, and now has grandchildren in Columbus City Schools. Wiles wrote them himself. He is a school board member with a long history of education advocacy. He’s also a guy you’ll find in all the actual schools — and not just the high-performing ones. He makes the rounds to PTA meetings, the neighborhood meetings, the superintendent community meetings, and even on the outside as an audience member at the Education Commission.

Wiles calls for simple, impactful things such as:

Uniform grading policies.

Academic themes in every feeder pattern.

Committees with more representation from community residents.

And board governance that requires interaction between the board members and neighborhood school communities and families.

PRIDE program to help with discipline and retention.

Recommendation #33 might be the best of all: Wiles suggests increasing and expanding the internal auditor’s office.

To read all of his suggestions, visit www.votewiles.com/recommendations-for-ccs/.

To read more updates on Columbus City School Issues, CLICK HERE.