What I provided to the Missouri State Auditor's office

The reaction to the recent reports by KOAM's Lisa Olliges and KZRG on the Joplin R-8 School District's decision to go into long-term debt to pay off "might-as-well" spending on the construction project surprised me.

It is almost as if half of Joplin had no idea of what has been going on in the school district under C. J. Huff's leadership. The "might-as-well" spending and the infamous six-and-a-half-mile ribbon have finally brought this situation to the attention of the Joplin community.

Of course, this is something that could have happened a couple of years ago if the Joplin Globe and other media had been acting as watchdogs for the public instead of as cheerleaders for making Joplin bigger and better.

Regular readers of the Turner Report have been aware of the excesses, narcissism, cronyism, bullying, and lies that have built the C. J. Huff empire, aided, of course, by a Board of Education that has never had anyone publicly show any spine until Debbie Fort did so at the July 22 meeting.

At that meeting, the board and the public were introduced to the auditors who will go over the books for the next several months, perhaps for the next year. They will not only be looking over the finances, but also the management of the school district, the no-bid contracts, the conflicts of interest, the excessive travel, and the inability of C. J. Huff to eliminate spending on frills even after the tornado hit and most administrators would have realized that business could go on as usual.

Four days before the last board meeting, I sent a message to the state auditor's office, in which I immediately noted that I was a disgruntled ex-employee. That has been the tag C. J. Huff has placed on me in the mistaken belief that people would just consider everything I wrote to be lies because I had it in for him.

On the contrary, because of my status I have had to be extra careful about the things I have written. Believe me, if anyone in the C. J. Huff Administration could show that a great deal of my writing, or even a small bit, was inaccurate, they would have finished me off a long time ago.

It hasn't happened.

Instead, the attacks have always been on me personally (as if enough of that hadn't been done while C. J. and his administrative team spent my hearing creating a fiction that almost put No Child Left Alive to shame).

Finally, and it took long enough, other media are beginning to see that there is a major story going on in the Joplin R-8 School District.

This is what I sent to the state auditors:

I wanted to provide you with some possible avenues of investigation when you begin your audit of the Joplin School District. First off, I am what you would call a disgruntled former employee. After 10 years as a middle school teacher here, I was fired in an extremely public way and at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

The Huff Administration has spent a considerable amount of money collecting information on people it considers to be enemies, using their technical staff to do research and having upper level administrators file complaints against the employees.

This is the subject of a lawsuit that was filed in Jasper County Circuit Court in June.

But in addition to being a disgruntled former employee, I was also a reporter for 22 years, earning more than 30 national, state, and regional awards for investigative reporting and I have continued that type of work since I left the newspaper business 15 years ago through my blog, The Turner Report.

During the past year, I have researched the school district and in the 37 years since I began reporting, I have never come across anything like this. I am sending links to some of the things I have written in the past year, many of them containing documents or links to websites with documents.

Included in this material:

-A YouTube video of the May 27 Board of Education meeting in which CFO Paul Barr talked about the district needing to hire someone to seek long-term financing because of $8 million in what he said the administration refers to as “might as well” spending. Though these items, which included doubling the number of tennis courts, adding artificial turf to all fields, adding lighting to all fields, and adding a track so students would not have to travel between the high school and the current track. None of these items were in the original bond issue plans that were approved by voters, but they decided they “might as well” do it while they were there.

-C. J. Huff’s financial disclosure reports for the past three years do not show any income from speaking fees, yet this material includes a video of a representative for the Washington Speakers Bureau saying that Huff speaks frequently for them and charges $8,000 per speech, plus travel expenses. In a July 2013 Joplin Globe article, Huff acknowledged that he had been contacted by the WSB and had made one speech for him. This material also includes a partial list f the speeches he has made over the past three years, with stops in at least 15 states, Washington, D. C., and an upcoming trip to Saskatchewan. The Joplin Globe article also indicates the district spent $89,000 in “thank-you” travel as Huff went from place to place thanking people for their help following the tornado.

-There is a link to the official federal scientific report which says that East Middle School suffered only “minor damage” during the tornado. Construction people have said it could have been ready for the 2011-2012 school year. Instead, it was torn down and students had to spend two and a half years in a warehouse school, while a brand new school was built.

-The district was approved for a federal grant for Franklin Tech School, which was supposed to be used for helping prepare people for the workforce. Instead, nearly the entire amount has gone for audio-visual equipment, including a jumbotron-type device (video scoreboard) for the high school gymnasium.

-A big problem is the confusion over Bright Futures. Supposedly, there is a Bright Futures that operates only in the Joplin School District and a Bright Futures USA that is a non-profit. Kim Vann, the district’s community development director, also serves as CEO of the non- profit, making $20,000 a year, according to Bright Futures USA’s 990 forms. Huff serves on the non-profit’s board of directors and is also Vann’s boss in the district. According to the 990 form, Huff spends three hours a week on Bright Futures USA, but I am not sure the Bright Futures work is not much more entangled than he is letting on.

And those are just part of the things in the material I am sending you. In one video, Huff talks about the Board of Education’s decision to give him carte blanche and letting him make decisions without consulting the board. He has continued to do that for three years and even acknowledged on a recent radio interview that he had not followed proper policies and procedures in the 18 months after the tornado because he was more concerned about “taking care of people.”

The Huff Administration has spent an incredible amount of money on self-promotion and has steered money away from the classroom and more toward administration and a never-ending series of initiatives.

If you need any more information, feel free to contact me at rturner229@hotmail.com,

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Randy Turner

http://joplinschoolstherealstory.blogspot.com/2013/12/huff-besendorfer-recommend-german.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/05/source-c-j-huff-keeping-second-set-of.html



http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/05/ethics-commission-documents-c-j-huff.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/05/huff-in-2012-dont-write-about-my.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/06/c-j-huff-tells-joplin-tornado-story-in.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/05/c-j-huffs-report-to-r-8-board-were.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/10/as-huff-besendorfer-hopscotch-globe-you.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/10/as-huff-besendorfer-hopscotch-globe-you.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2011/10/c-j-huff-board-never-hesitated-to-give.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/01/documents-huff-tina-smith-bury.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/05/bid-documents-show-video-board-included.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/11/joplin-r-8-board-approves-c-j-huffs.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/03/scheduling-conference-set-for-sexual.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-joplin-r-8-administration-is-not.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-joplin-r-8-administration-is-not_15.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/03/c-j-huff-in-his-own-words-joplin.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/06/lawsuit-accuses-c-j-huff-of-conspiracy.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/11/bleeding-taxpayers-dry-empire-that-c-j.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/03/bright-futures-schedules-election-day.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/09/bright-futures-or-dark-past-ceos-30k-in.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/07/huff-administration-saves-money-by.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/06/joplin-r-8wgu-partnership-conflict-of.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/06/over-18-months-bright-futures-usa.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/10/joplin-r-8-administrators-to-federal.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/01/division-of-employment-security-r-8.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/04/video-joplin-r-8-board-march-25-meeting.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/09/joplin-r-8-board-of-education-kept-in.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2013/07/board-approves-blueprint-on-how-social.html#more

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/05/might-as-well-spending-costs-r-8-school.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/04/final-report-on-joplin-tornado-east.html

http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2014/01/huff-ignored-whistleblowers-10-page.html