Wayland Patch 4/5/11: Principal Discretionary Accounts Closed, No Fraud Alleged. At Monday night’s Wayland School Committee meeting, members addressed concerns and questions related to the Principal’s Discretionary Funds and brought to the forefront by the recent draft of the Abrahams Report. The funds in question, one at each of Wayland’s five schools, were pointed out as violations of Massachusetts General Law 71:47 on page 17 of the Abrahams Report. That law, according to the report, allows for individual schools to maintain "student activity bank accounts but no other bank accounts are allowed as all funds of any entity/department of the municipality must be in bank accounts under the custody of the Treasurer." All of these accounts have been closed on the recommendation of Wayland Town Counsel Mark Lanza, said School Business Administrator Geoff McDonald. School Committee Chair Louis Jurist explained to the committee and the members of the public in attendance that these accounts have been in place since the 1990s when they were permitted by Massachusetts law and were "pretty widespread in their use throughout Massachusetts."

Wayland Patch 4/3/11: Committee Finishes Reviewing Draft Abrahams Report with The Abrahams Group. Wayland’s Operational Review Committee met Thursday night with representatives from The Abrahams Group to further discuss the 115-page Abrahams Report. In October, Wayland completed the hiring of The Abrahams Group, an independent assessors firm. The Abrahams Group was hired to "review the budget and expenditures reporting format of the Town of Wayland and the Wayland Public Schools, to evaluate the non-educational service delivery structure, and to review school administrative structure," according to a letter confirming the hiring from The Abrahams Group to Town Administrator Fred Turkington. Thursday night, the group reviewed the non-educational services portion of the report as well as re-visited parts of the report already discussed.