The Toronto Ombudsman receives and reviews stories about bureaucratic boondoggles from around the world. Sometimes the newsletter will include these stories. The first is below.
Between the weather and the city strike, a lot of kids in Toronto probably thought they had a less than stellar summer this year. It could be worse, they could be living in San Bernardino County, California.
The local school district in San Bernardino inadvertently had a five-minute shortfall for each of the instructional days last year. In total, the shortfall amounted to two days of instruction time for the whole year. But because of a quirk in the regulation, the schools had to be kept in session for an extra THIRTY-FOUR days this summer to avoid losing millions in funding.
“We made an error on the minimum days of about five minutes,” said one school principal. “Realistically, that’s our accounting mistake as adults. We’re unfortunately making the children pay for it by making them give up their summer.”
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