Audit Finds More Red Ink at Burbank Child Center

Burbank Unified School District officials got good news and bad news Friday.

The good news was that there was no criminal conduct by district staff members responsible for putting a child-care center almost half a million dollars in debt over three years.

The bad news was that the debt is not $453,000, as officials originally thought, but more than $507,000.

The good and bad news came from the auditing firm of Vicente, Lloyd & Stutzman, hired by the district to investigate the deficit at the Horace Mann Children’s Center.

A final report on the deficit is due next week from the firm, said Dick Tighe, district business manager. Tighe said the auditors told him that accounting mismanagement, not criminal activity, was to blame for the deficit.

Former school district Supt. Wayne Boulding said before retiring last week that the center’s $750,000 budget had been mismanaged.

The center cares for the children of parents who work for the city of Burbank or nine Burbank-based companies, including NBC, Lockheed and the Burbank Studios. The center, which accommodates 180 children, is administered by the school district and financed by enrollment fees.

The deficit went unnoticed until last year because the budgets for three of the district’s child-care programs were lumped together, and thus did not reflect the deficit of the Mann center, officials said.

The deficit was caused by parents pulling 41 children out of the program last year when the center’s future was uncertain, Tighe said. Most of the vacancies remain, he said, but school officials hope they will be filled soon.

The Burbank school board earlier this month voted to keep the center open while looking for ways to erase the debt.