Does it seem weird to anyone else that the "highly qualified" new CFO has to have a mentor from another county to teach her the ropes? I read it that Walton County has no one currently on staff to mentor her on the budget process. How long has Mrs. Anderson been superintendent? Mrs Anderson should not be expected to be a bookkeeper, but she should be able to know enough to lead her employees.
Walton School District Hires New CFO
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A supervisor needs to know something about all the divisions in an organization.
Currently, the only qualification is that you got out of High School...
Your post makes a good case for Hiring as opposed to Electing.
No, actually it doesn't. Unless she's run a school districts finances before I think it's a great idea. Better than learning on the job like the last CFO.
If she has never run a school system's accounting and finances ( no experience in this are). How is she highly qualified? If we had an appointed superintendent who needed a mentor because they have never done a job like it before, you would be standing on the rooftop screaming about his/her competency.
Completely different scenarios.
First, this person is a CPA, her predecessor had a high school diploma.
Second, one would assume that an appointed superintendent had experience in running a school district.
Finally, there are probably some nuances that vary drastically from a hospital setting. Being a CPA doesn't automatically qualify you to be the CFO of anything and would probably require even basic things like using the states software which is probably circa 1950's era technology.
Given the hiring decision made with the previous CFO, it seems we are hanging our hats on the letters CPA. Lots of people have the letters DR. In front of their names, but a proctologist is not the same as a thoracic surgeon. All have specialities just like CPAs.
Again the previous CFO got her job through attrition, i.e. hung around long enough. No disagreement that there are different specialties CPA's can have, hence the mentor.
My point is, I don't want my podiatrist to be given the job as a heart surgeon and then mentored to do it. I want my heart surgeon to have done it enough to do surgery with his eyes closed. That's how in define highly wualifie
So how long should the school board go without a CFO so we can find someone with enough experience?
At least with the superintendent issue the county has 2 years to define qualifications and then look for a replacement.
I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that the school board was informed of the hiring decision, they did not make it. Most people in business tell you not to hire out of panic because it leads to more panic down the road.