The Seattle school board voted last week to dismiss Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson after a state audit found improper activity in the district’s small-business-contracting program. Auditors found that the program had spent more than $1.5 million for questionable purposes and close to $300,000 on services it did not receive.
The audit did not directly implicate Ms. Goodloe-Johnson, who had led the 47,000-student district since 2007 and whose contract was recently extended, but school board members said she should have acted more quickly on the problem.
The program was created to help small businesses bid for district contracts, but the audit found that contracts had been steered toward companies that charged the district inflated prices for questionable services, such as nearly $75,000 for training materials that appeared to have been copied from other sources. The program’s former administrator, Silas Potter, resigned last year, and the program was shut down.
Ms. Goodloe-Johnson will be paid a severance package of $264,000, plus benefits.
