High school seniors’ push for transparency validated by audit of public school-funding foundation

An audit has vindicated two San Diego high school seniors who raised concerns about how money was handled by “foundations” established to help area high schools.

Kevin Wang and Litong Tiang published a report last year calling for greater transparency into the Canyon Crest Academy Foundation, which handled donations for their robotics team and other student groups.

The pair, who called themselves Ravens for Transparency and have since graduated, criticized the foundation for taking 25% of dollars raised for its discretionary fund and administrative costs, and for failing to report its executive director’s pay in multiple years of tax filings, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Wang and Tiang were initially met with backlash – including from Canyon Crest Principal Brett Killeen, who called their report “grossly erroneous” in an email to families. But this month the San Dieguito Union High School District board accepted an independent audit with 17 recommendations for improving its four high school foundations.

“We were right,” Tian said at the board meeting to audience applause. “My goal from here is that the CCAF functions better for students and the community. My goal is not to decrease the donations, to ruin anyone’s life. My goal is to make this organization work better because we all know how important their work is.”

Superintendent Anne Staffieri said the four high schools receive more than $5 million annually from the foundations, which fund various programs and items for the schools. Many schools nationwide use similar groups to solicit private donations to enhance offerings.

Some of the reforms have already been implemented, the Union-Tribune reported, such as the Canyon Crest foundation refiling tax returns and reducing its fee to 20%.

“In our sampling and our testing, we did not see any direct indication of fraud,” said John Dominguez of the audit firm CWDL.

Board member Phan Anderson was “glad the students did not back down” and said that their efforts were “worth it.”

“It sounds like there is a lot of work to be done by the district to ensure that all 17 recommendations are followed,” she added.