MCPS Principal Used Student Funds for Staff Development

When parents and guardians pay a fee to their child's school, they imagine that those fees are then used to pay for something for the student.

Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case.

The Board of Education allows principals to collect fees from students and to then spend those fees without oversight.  From time to time audits are performed to find out how student fees were actually used. Frequently audits of schools show that student fees have been misdirected and used for non-student uses.

The July 10, 2017, audit of Paint Branch High School student fees cited the principal for doing exactly that. Student fees were used to pay for staff development.  What did parents and guardians think they had paid for with those fees?  The audit does not say.  Class fees, senior fees/dues, field trip fees can all be diverted to non-student uses without any oversight from the Board of Education.  It is only a year or two later when the accounts are audited that the misuse of student fees is discovered.