This year, doing club finances properly through ASB has been convoluted, leading many clubs to mishandle their funds, and possibly participate in embezzlement. Due to slow form processing and a lack of information, clubs have struggled to meet district requirements. Seattle Schools created Associated Student Bodies as a barrier to misappropriation and embezzlement of club funding money and school clubs are legally required to keep their money in an ASB account, and to do fundraising and events with approval and financial oversight from ASB.
Going through ASB to manage finances requires the submission of many forms only available on the SPS staff website. Garfield’s website has minimal information about ASB procedures and forms, while other schools like Franklin have clear financial instructions for clubs on their websites.
“If you weren’t aware of how to reach out to these ASB people, you’d find it difficult, especially if you didn’t have experience with admin,” APISU co-president Angela Ngyuen said. “We had a meeting at the start of the year but that was it.”
For one Garfield sports team, paperwork and regulations make some items, such as team meals, difficult to purchase. To circumvent those issues, they keep some of their money “under the table.” Another club at Garfield attempted to get approval from ASB even though they “knew [ASB] wasn’t going to do anything and/or were going to make it harder than it needed to be.” In the end, they went ahead with the fundraiser without approval because ASB ignored their emails. They now store their money in a “secure place” according to their co-president.
“You had to get a signoff on the damn form [and] it wasn’t very clear how to do it,” exclaimed the club’s faculty advisor, talking about creating their club. According to the co-president, since they went around ASB, “the money that [they] collected isn’t secure at all and can be spent by whoever on whatever.”
These issues may be due to a recent lack of ASB regulation enforcement at Garfield. An SPS audit of ASB from 2012 stated that ASB, even then, was a point of concern in terms of fiscal compliance. Right now, nobody enforces ASB finance regulations. This creates an issue – if rules are self-enforced, following them needs to be easy or people will work around them.
“Honestly though, whenever I do get the chance to talk to ASB people … they are pretty accommodating, but once you’re out of their reach, or you can’t contact them or you give them paperwork to deal with, it’s kind of hard to deal with,” APISU co-president Angela Ngyuen said. “I don’t really blame them for not being the most present because the admin does have their own things to do.”
The ASB advisor did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. Because there are legal issues with what clubs detail in this article, some sources remain anonymous.
