Blame for the current Scranton School District Disaster isn’t actually very easy to assign, because we are going way back.  And that means there are different political majorities and factions and people in control at different times.

Not every person listed below is getting blame, per se.  The Grand Jury will handle that definitively.  The post has “the Players” in the title for a reason.  These are simply people who are involved.

I’ll start with the two most salient issues: Sansky and the bus contract.  Both of these originate back in 2005/2006.  Chris Kelly at the Scranton Times has been doing a really phenomenal job digging here, so keep reading what he keeps putting out.

The only current Board member who served back then was Bob Lesh.  I hear his name thrown around a lot when it comes to both Sansky and the bus contract and potential corruption.  Except that he was in the minority back then and didn’t have power.  That’s not to absolve him of blame, since he voted for both Sansky and the bus extension.  But his influence was limited, given his position at the time.

Kathleen McGuigan was also in the minority when this happened and is in the same category as Lesh.  She wasn’t aligned with either Lesh and his crew or the majority back then.  She always did her own thing, so it doesn’t make much sense to assign any culpability to her.

Then there’s the Old Majority (as I’m naming them).  It’s long ago, so forgive me if I misremember the composition (and feel free to correct me).  I could find no records on the SSD website about past members (big surprise).  Anyway, the Times covers a little bit of the Sansky and bus backstory in this article.  Back then the President was Brian Jeffers.  He was there with Tom Gilbride, as the article mentions.  That’s where this contract started.  I won’t exhaust what Chris Kelly already examined.

But majority-minority politics actually take a back seat to where the problem really is.  So let me side-step for a second.  There isn’t any evidence that any of the aforementioned people did anything sinister and untoward.  And, honestly, the person I genuinely do blame, openly and without any issue, is recently retired Business Manager, Gregg Sunday.

I’m sure the grand jury will have a field day with/about him, since he’s a centerpoint in all this.  If you’ve paid any attention to the articles in the Times, you’ll note that he paid pills to Sansky that were handwritten with zero explanation.  (Again, Chris Kelly has covered this extensively.)  The auditor’s report had an example of one, and it’s basically a slip of paper with a dollar sign, a number, and something that says, “work done” — I can’t see any competent individual paying out that kind of bill.  I have bills.  You, dear reader, have bills.  Would you pay a hand-written note with no explanation for what was done?  Of course not.  Business managers should have better sense.  If he was under orders, the grand jury will dig it up.  If, as we hear in Lackawanna County way too often, “you can’t prosecute incompetence”… well, at least we’ll know what happened.

It’s really hard to go back over a decade with any kind of true clarity.  So let’s focus on the more recent past, where people had chances to address the issues and did not.  If you recall, I pointed out on New Year’s Day of 2017 that all was collapsing.  It fell on deaf ears.

So let me address the failings that really stand out:

• 2016-2017 Finance Committee Chair, Tom Schuster – I cannot find one single account in either the Times or in Board meeting minutes where Schuster raised a single red flag about the dire straits of the district.  This is unconscionable and disqualifying (in addition to his integrity issues).  There is no reasonable excuse for not being aware that the ship is sinking if you’re the captain.  Schuster shouldn’t have needed to read my doom and gloom writings about the district to know that disaster was coming.  He was the chair of the committee that had all the information necessary to figure that out and take action.  He was in charge for two full years leading up to this total mess.  And he didn’t address it.  And here we are.  Layoffs.  Tax increases.  More of both on the horizon.  Threats of a state takeover.  At least we have somebody qualified there now, in the form of Paige Cognetti (who has an MBA from Harvard).  The current Board has a lot of work ahead of it.
• Mark McAndrew – The Times has gone out of its way to paint Mark as some kind of revolutionary in the realm of transparency and getting to the bottom of things.  But using their own reporting, Mark was totally aware that Sansky was an issue all the way back in 2014 and then he never did anything about it!  That’s like saying your toilet is leaking, so we better call the plumber 4 years from now. This is patently absurd and he is not a hero. But he is thinking of a Council run next year and is doing his best to come off as a populist hero.  Don’t be fooled.  He, like his ally Schuster, watched the ship sink and did nothing.  (And has the same integrity issues that his buddy has.)
• Bob Sheridan – The former President of the Board, much like Schuster, had the opportunity to both be aware and to act and did not.  He lost his election (and is rumored to be considering a comeback), but the voters made the right choice here.  You can’t preside over the near-collapse of the school district of one of the bigger cities in Pennsylvania and expect to be re-elected.

There’s a lot of new blood and a new direction, so this post, while more of a downer, doesn’t mean the future is bleak.  I’m merely looking back.  Next post, I’m looking forward.  And, boy, do I have something that’ll get you excited.  I think I’ve got a way to both lower taxes and shore up the school district.  How in God’s name is this possible?

Stay tuned.