The Portland School Board took its first stab Tuesday night at publicly reckoning with a searing audit of Portland Public Schools’ bond program.
By the end of the night, the board had agreed that in the upcoming year it would work to sharpen its understanding of its fiscal responsibilities and its oversight of capital funding, capital projects and the district’s bond programs.
The seven-member board met Tuesday to draft its response to 10 recommendations laid out to the body in an external audit of PPS’s multibillion-dollar bond program. While not unanimous at every turn, a majority of the board concurred with each of the auditors’ recommendations. Those notably include suggesting that the board develop new protocol around individual board members’ abilities to ask questions, and some recommendations to bolster staffing in the Office of Internal Performance Auditor to add an extra layer of accountability to bond work…