Orleans Parish (La.) board faulted for money management

The Orleans Parish (La.) School Board is not properly accounting for the money it shares with the state's Recovery School District, resulting in $2.1 million misspent in fiscal year 2011, a new report has found. The New Orleans Times-Picayune says the report by the Bureau of Governmental Research, a non-profit research organization, recommends that the board change its bookkeeping procedures to clearly track shared revenues and costs. The Orleans Parish board controls only about one quarter of New Orleans' 80-plus public schools -- the rest were taken over by the state Recovery School District after Hurricane Katrina. But the parish board continues to levy taxes for all the schools, receive some funds for both districts and cover some costs for city schools as a whole.