NEWS

Mississippi Ed Dept. travel forms spotty

Mollie Bryant

The Clarion-Ledger

The Council of Chief State School Officers, a prominent player on the national education stage, covered most of the cost of State Superintendent Carey Wright’s trip last year to Shanghai, China, for a diplomacy event.

It cost the state $789.

But offsetting what may be considered a nominal expense for such a trip are Wright’s travel records, which went to the wrong agency for approval — a violation that can have costly consequences.

Wright did not submit the paperwork to the Department of Finance and Administration for approval as required under state law, instead getting approval from the Board of Education president, John Kelly.

Spending funds on unapproved travel is considered a misdemeanor, with penalties that can include removal from one’s position and a fine of up to $250.

Kelly emphasized that an education organization covered most of the costs for the trip, and he said he was unaware that state law requires DFA to approve international travel.

“We don’t approve a lot of those at all,” he said. “In fact, they’re scrutinized quite heavily. … Any time we have the chance to tell our story to people around the country — and in this case, around the world — we like to take the opportunity to do that.”

The timing of the reporting error could be better for Wright. It follows apparent clashes between MDE and the state’s Republican leadership over salaries, a transgender bathroom policy and other issues. The issues also have arrived as the state Legislature has placed travel spending under increased scrutiny, with budget committees expected to hold hearings on the topic.

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said the hearings will differentiate between in-state trips taken as part of a person’s job duties, such as a reading coach traveling to a school district to help students and teachers, and other types of travel deemed nonessential.

“I will say that I believe that there can be benefits to attending conferences for the state employees that are attending them,” he said. “However, I think as a general rule, executives in Mississippi state agencies spend way too much time and money out of state going to nice resorts, and that’s something that we’re going to look very closely at when we focus on travel. I believe that state government can spend significantly less money by minimizing unnecessary out-of-state travel cost.”

The Clarion-Ledger discovered the issues with the $789 international trip during a review of travel records for Mississippi Department of Education’s 11 top administrators. Of all the trips MDE’s upper administrators made, Wright’s week-long trip to China in May 2015 stood out — not for its cost, but because of two errors and its lack of DFA approval.

An MDE spokeswoman would not coordinate an interview with Wright but provided a statement that said Kelly, the then board president, signed two of the travel forms, including one that said the trip was not international.

“This was the first time in at least five years that a Mississippi Department of Education official traveled outside of the country on behalf of the state, and not securing Department of Finance and Administration approval was an oversight,” the agency’s statement said. “In the future, if Dr. Wright or any other MDE official has the occasion to travel internationally to represent the state, we will seek approval from DFA.”

Asked if they would pursue the issue as a misdemeanor, the state attorney general’s office said it investigates “any case where there is credible evidence of wrongdoing,” and the state auditor’s office said it couldn’t confirm or deny matters that may be subject to investigation.

One of the errors on the forms, which describe a meeting with Chinese education leaders “to learn from one another” about education reform, misidentified the sponsoring organization as the Southern Regional Education Board.

According to the actual sponsor, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Wright and heads of seven other state education agencies traveled to Shanghai as part of a U.S. delegation for diplomacy efforts with China. The group met with the country’s education leaders to discuss student assessment and teacher training and visited Chinese schools.

“The China trip was marked in-state on one of the two travel forms associated with this trip in error,” MDE spokeswoman Jean Cook wrote in an email. “Obviously, it was an out-of-state trip as evidenced by the China designation.”

In another email, she wrote: “The trip was incorrectly labeled as an SREB conference on one part of the travel form. This trip was sponsored by CCSSO, which was documented elsewhere on the form. The SREB reference was a clerical error.”

The records MDE provided The Clarion-Ledger do not show that CCSSO sponsored the trip.

State agencies handle approval of all travel within Mississippi and the rest of the country, but DFA approves international trips.

“We look at travel authorization, and we make sure that all of the signatures are in place from the agency. We make sure they’ve attached a worksheet of the estimated cost,” said Laurie Pierce, DFA’s special projects officer for the office of purchasing, travel and fleet management. “We also look at the box where they detail the reason why they’re traveling, and sometimes we ask for more detail, but … it’s part of what encompasses the authorization.”

The Clarion-Ledger’s review of travel records for MDE’s 11 top administrators show $129,967 in state funds was spent on trips across the country and state during the past two fiscal years. Wright flew to eight conferences in Washington, D.C., while the MDE administrator who spent the most on travel, Associate State Superintendent Jean Massey, went to 13 other states and Washington, D.C.

MDE’s travel expenses posted on the state’s Transparency site exclude information on the location and purpose of the trips.

In response to the request for travel forms and receipts, MDE Chief of Staff Washington Cole said in a letter that the agency had no documentation for a trip Chief Information Officer John Q. Porter took in March 2015, before his appointment to the position several months later. After a second formal records request, MDE provided a portion of the records for the trip without receipts.

MDE eventually provided the receipts, which showed the agency reimbursed Porter $599 to register for a four-day technology conference in Atlanta. Porter attended one day of the conference. Cook, MDE’s spokeswoman, said in an email that he “unexpectedly needed to return to Jackson before the conference ended.” She did not provide further explanation.

The Clarion-Ledger requested interviews with five MDE employees, including Wright, to discuss the purposes of their trips and what they got out of them, as well as an agency expert who could discuss paperwork requirements, how the agency approves travel and how grant funds cover costs for some trips. Cook would not coordinate the interviews but provided a written statement from Wright.

“As the leader of the Mississippi Department of Education, I take seriously my duty to be a good steward of public funds,” Wright’s statement said. “Travel expenses are incurred only if they advance the goals of the Board’s Strategic Plan.”

The statement said MDE’s administrators travel to conferences, training and other meetings and sometimes to participate in national and regional education organizations.

“Mississippi’s education leaders are being invited more to the national stage to share our expertise because of our state’s recent successes in improving student achievement,” Wright’s statement said. “… Traveling to professional meetings not only enables us to share our successful strategies with colleagues in other states, but provides us with the opportunity to learn about strategies that have been successful in other states.”

Carissa Moffat Miller, deputy executive of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said her organization’s events bring together education leaders from across the country so they can share ideas and learn about new approaches in the field.

Miller said that when she served as deputy superintendent for Idaho’s education agency, “it was important for me to have a broader set of ideas to think about what could be possible. It’s a lot like the school districts in a state meeting together to get good ideas from (their) colleagues.”

According to figures provided to The Clarion-Ledger, seven Southeastern state education agencies, including MDE, spent an average of $1.92 million on travel during each of the past two fiscal years. MDE spent above that both years and devoted about $2 million to travel last year, an increase of about $79,400 from the year before.

When it comes to travel, two state agencies outspent MDE on trips in and outside of Mississippi last year — the Department of Human Services ($8.5 million) and the state Department of Health ($6.2 million).

But Kelly, a member of the state education board, believes travel spending is part of “the cost of doing business.”

“In order for you to really improve your system, you have to know what other states are doing,” he said. “A lot of travel, particularly on the executive team, is going out, seeing what’s going on in education in other states and in other parts of the country. It’s very hard to do better when you don’t know what ‘good’ looks like, and you have to show your people what ‘good’ looks like.”

Contact Mollie Bryant at mbryant2@gannett.com or 601-961-7251. Follow @MollieEBryant on Twitter.

State education agency travel costs by state for the 2016 fiscal year:

Mississippi: $2,070,258
Arkansas: $1,394,101
Florida: $2,802,818
Georgia: $2,736,483 (for fiscal year 2015; figures for 2016 fiscal year unavailable)
Kentucky: $2,866,251
Louisiana: $944,052 (estimated)
South Carolina: $1,077,665

MDE administrators who spent the most on travel during fiscal year 2016:

Associate State Superintendent Jean Massey: $19,651
Chief Information Officer John Q. Porter: $12,331
Associate State Superintendent Washington Cole: $10,388
State Superintendent Carey Wright: $9,926
Chief Academic Officer Kim Benton: $6,516