An employee of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division had their employment with the division terminated earlier this year following the revelation that they had inappropriately used the division’s public assets (telephones) to make long distance calls that were unrelated to work purposes.
The amount racked up in unauthorized calls was $9,844, said Education Ministry officials who presented their report on losses in Saskatchewan School Divisions a couple of weeks ago.
An agreement was reached with the former employee, who was not identified in the report, to pay back $6,000 of the loss. It was reported that this amount has now been recovered by the school division.
As a result of this activity, Cornerstone has made a change to its accounts payable procedures to ensure monthly phone bills are reviewed for international costs.
The inappropriate phone uses stretched from January of 2012 to May of 2014.
To align processes with other government agencies, the Ministry of Education tabled two confirmed losses by school divisions with the standing committee on public accounts.
This report is the first of its kind for Saskatchewan’s boards of education.
The Education Ministry in consultation with the Saskatchewan Association of School Business Officials, is developing a policy for school divisions to report these types of instances quarterly.
The newly developed policy will be in place for the start of the new academic school year in early September of this year.
The new policy will have school divisions use the same reporting processes that are used by executive government, crown corporations and health regions.
The only other loss noted in the first report was attributed to the Saskatoon School Division and it involved theft from a petty cash box and from busing and athletic cash boxes between March and August of 2014 in the amount of $1,051. The employee who committed the theft, who was also not identified in the report, likewise lost their job.
No one from the Cornerstone division was available to comment on the report or the termination of employment.
