The Akron Board of Education voted Monday to pursue termination of its facilities director amid allegations he profited off the sale of district-owned equipment.
The district in a press release Monday accused Steven Keenan, facilities services director, of abusing "the district's purchasing processes and improper facilitation of equipment transactions with a vendor without obtaining" proper board approval. The issues stem from Keenan allegedly selling eleven district-owned lawn mowers to a vendor in March, according to the resolution approved Monday.
"Prior to finalizing the sale, Mr. Keenan directly negotiated with Vendor for the purchase of seven of the eleven lawnmowers he approved to trade," the resolution alleges. "Mr. Keenan accepted Vendor’s 'employee and family discount' consisting of the trade in value +10% + sales tax. Mr. Keenan paid Vendor $5,693.32 for the seven lawnmowers via personal check. Keenan listed five of the seven lawnmowers for sale on Facebook Marketplace asking for a total sale price of $14,700.
Keenan declined to comment when reached Monday. He has 10 days to submit a written request for a hearing on the termination, before the board can meet to approve his firing.
Board Member Barbara Sykes argued the situation should be referred to the police, prosecutor’s office, IRS and state auditor. She said she will also request a state audit of the district’s practices and procedures to prevent something like this from happening again.
“I think that we cannot finish this investigation here with this resolution, that we should continue to look into this, to find out if this is a system issue, a system problem, in addition to individual problems, who decide to take advantage of the system,” Sykes said.
The issues related to controls over spending could go beyond Keenan, Board Member Gregory Harrison said in a brief interview after the meeting Monday.
"Now we need to look at how do we prevent this, how far, how wide is it, and how do prevent this from happening again?" Harrison said.
Keenan last year had accused former APS Superintendent Michael Robinson of unprofessional conduct in a letter for allegedly belittling him and other staff. Robinson left the district this spring after an investigation found similar allegations against him to be credible.
Editor's note: Steven Keenan is a member of Ideastream Public Media's Community Advisory Board, a volunteer group. His work on the board is independent of his position at Akron Public Schools. As a board member, he has no input on Ideastream's editorial decisions.
