Enfield's School Audit: A Breakdown in Communication and Oversight
The newly released audit of the Board of Education's $5.6 million cost overrun makes one thing clear: this wasn't a simple mistake. It was a systemic failure — the result of siloed operations, weak internal rigor, and missteps by both the school district and the town. And here's the hard truth: Enfield still hasn't actually paid for this failure. Town reserves covered the gap, shrinking our financial cushion and limiting our ability to soften future tax hikes. Next year's budget will reveal just how vulnerable we are. What this incident tells us is that Enfield isn't managing its risk very well — and that should worry everyone. Fundamentally, this was a costly risk-management failure, and nothing in the audit suggests it can't happen again. [ Audit link , and Council slide deck ] CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA), the audit firm, outlines eight major problems, many of them rooted in communication breakdowns between the town, the school district, and the state. The ...
