I don’t get it, and I am guessing that many Jim Thorpe Area School District residents don’t get it either. The board paid $15,000 for a forensic review that took 10 months to complete. One of the key reasons the board approved this expense was to find out whether there was anything funny going on with a credit card issued to the district’s business manager.

This is a credit card that was in the name of Business Manager Lauren Kovac, who has now been placed on paid administrative leave while another pricey investigation is to be taken up by fresh sets of eyes.

This was also a credit card whose application was not approved by the board, yet the board signed off on expenses rung up on it monthly, including some whose propriety are being questioned by residents and several activist school board candidates.

What I am wondering is how the forensic review missed this key question. Or did it? We don’t really know, because the first report has been kept under wraps since it was returned to the board in August.

Right to Know Law requests by this newspaper and others were rejected because of legal maneuvering to protect the rights of employees and for other reasons. I didn’t hear anything through all of this legal wrangling about the rights of taxpayers, who are footing the bill.

The Times News is appealing the rejection, especially since the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s attorney, Melissa Melewsky, believes that the school district overstepped its authority.

“The school district can’t agree to confidentiality terms outlined in this letter/contract,” Melewsky wrote to Times News Editor-in-Chief Marta Gouger. “Agencies can’t contract away the public’s right to know. The confidentiality letter is probably standard language for the law firm, but public agencies are treated differently under the law than private citizens, most notably with regard to records subject to public access under the Right to Know Law.”

I must live in a bubble. If I were on the Jim Thorpe school board, my number one question would have been: “Did any administrator or employee act beyond their scope of authority in this credit card caper?” If the answer is “yes,” then I would want to know specifics.

Wouldn’t you think that this would have been made clear to the accounting firm that performed the forensic review? Oh, wait, it was made crystal clear. Here is what part of the engagement letter to the firm said, “The purpose is to determine if there were any improprieties with respect to the expenditures on the credit cards.”

I also would love to know whether the board laid out $15,000 expecting a forensic audit only to get a forensic review. There are major differences. Who was the gatekeeper and liaison who flubbed this distinction?

School board members are muzzled and can’t speak publicly because of the confidentiality of the first report and the rejection by district solicitor Carl Beard of the Right to Know requests to make it public. I was particularly interested in what board President Pearl Downs-Sheckler had to say since she had so vehemently proclaimed when the report was first given to the board that it would be made public.

At Wednesday’s meeting, she read from a prepared statement she was asked to make, saying that the board would like to release the forensic review, but it is under “an active investigation.”

“If this would be at all possible, the day we had it, you would have had it.” In asking for residents’ patience, Downs-Sheckler said the board needs to “look into things.”

Although we don’t know what’s in the first report, we do know that it did not cover all that the board had asked to be examined. That’s straight from solicitor Beard’s mouth.

So now residents will wait many more months, lay out thousands of additional dollars, continue paying Business Manager Kovac’s $96,305 annual salary with no end date, and, get this: The board will request that a state association of business officials provide a recommendation for a substitute business manager, with the outlay of more funds. The board also stripped Kovac’s position of board secretary from her and assigned the tasks to board member Gerald Strubinger.

I am amazed that Kovac remained in that sensitive position during the forensic review, especially since she was responsible for the official board minutes. Was it a conflict for her to be interpreting in these minutes controversial matters directly involving her?

Even if she were scrupulously fair, the perception of a conflict cannot be overlooked.

So, what will this new audit (or whatever you call it) involve? We don’t know yet, and, by the way, there is no guarantee that district residents will get to see the results of this one either, according to Beard. But we are determined to let you know what is in BOTH of these reports.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com