City Controller says school property is walking out the door

Computers, musical instruments, and other items are missing from Philadelphia schools according to an audit released Wednesday August 25th.  The City Controller says the audit turned up inadequate recording keeping and almost $50,000 in missing property.

A School District spokesman could not immediately comment on the audit.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz says auditors selected a sample of fifty items catalogued at seven different schools and found items missing at each school.  Butkovitz says the schools are not doing a good job keeping track of their high priced, high risk personal inventory.

“That includes laptops – which are worth $1,500 a piece,” he says. “It included a $12,000 cash register, and a $1,200 projector. Everything we do is based on sampling.  There are actually millions and millions of dollars of these types of items in the school district and if you’d take seriously the idea of inventory control, these things are in danger of walking out the door.”

Butkovitz says at one school, officials indicated missing computers were transferred, but had no record of where they had been transferred to.