Once Upon A Time

There was a magical kingdom which was so beautiful it was called Jewell. The children of Jewell were very lucky indeed because while children in all other kingdoms had schools that struggle with finding enough money the Jewell School had a large treasure trove that would grow magically because the people of Jewell had the secret of spinning gold out of trees.



The people of Jewell chose from amongst themselves a handful of representatives who were put in charge of the treasure to make sure it was always used wisely and always to benefit the education of the children of the kingdom.



One day, the people in charge of the treasure( we'll just call them The Board) appointed a Wizard to oversee the school. Wizard John was an impressive fellow. He saw that some children needed special help so he waved his wand and there appeared the "Guaranteed Success Program". This program rewarded children who finished their homework and stayed in school. The rewards were very grand indeed. Good children could travel the world. So did the Wizard John and his minions who not only traveled free of charge but were paid to travel along.

The Board was so happy they not only didn't bother to keep track of how much treasure was used but decided to reward Wizard John with his own castle. He could draw from the treasure and was put in charge of building his own castle. Wizard John was given a generous budget and used students from the school to help build the castle in exchange for tools they would need to practice a trade later. The board, very wisely, made a restriction that any expenditure over $5000.00 that wasn't included in the castle budget had to be approved by the board. To save the board the troublesome task of these approvals the Wizard John kept extra expenditures under that $5000.00 limit each time he needed something more.

It was decided that the castle should have a moat. Wizard John wasn't sure he needed the entire castle surrounded so he build the moat in sections never spending more than $5000.00 each time a new section was built until the moat was completed.



All was happy and life in Jewell was the envy of all other kingdoms. That is until one day.



For no apparent reason the board gave Wizard John an administrative leave and appointed a new Wizard who questioned many reimbursements to Wizard John that seemed unusually high.

A Grand Inquisition was held. It was found that between 2002 and 2007 Wizard John and his wife received almost $1.4 million in payroll, benefits and reimbursements. The reimbursements alone for nearly $206,000 and that didn't include extra pay for going on GS trips that paid the magical wizard about $12,000. The ability to spin gold out of trees made it possible to give the Wizard and his minions all expense paid vacation trips with the good children of Jewell and get paid for their time on top of that. It was found that the Wizard John did nothing wrong. It was found the board didn't see line item changes, or were unaware that monthly financial reports may not have been detailed quite enough and yet approved them anyway.

To this day the Wonderful Wizard of Jewell remains as a paid consultant to the school of Jewell.

Everyone lived happily ever after.

The end.

Next time kids we'll have the amazing story of the magical contract for the Jewell Schools Business Manager that could be either three pages or one page long with the waving of a magic wand!