WELCOMING
ARMAND FUSCO
To The Board of
Directors
of the
Federation
of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, Inc.
The Officers and Board Members of The Federation of Connecticut
Taxpayers met on August 16, 2008 in West Hartford
to welcome Dr. Armand A. Fusco to the Federation’s Board of Directors. Armand resides in
Guilford, Connecticut, with his wife Constance of 55 years who retired as
Assistant Superintendent of School in Madison, CT. They have four children, fourteen
grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Armand has an
extensive career in education having begun as a teacher in 1958 and quickly
advancing to administrative positions becoming superintendent of schools in
Hadley, Massachusetts and Branford, Connecticut. After his retirement from Branford, he became
Director of the Teacher Intern Program and a professor of education at the University of Bridgeport,
Retirement
provided an opportunity for Armand to advocate for better management and
monitoring of school resources—human, physical and financial. To this end he has conducted numerous
workshops throughout the state and has appeared on many cable shows and talk
radio. While doing so, he developed his
own bi-weekly education column, Inside Education, that
appeared in several shoreline newspapers.
He has authored
many professional works, including the book School
Corruption: Betrayal of Children and Public Trust, and Ending Corruption and
Waste in Your Public School:
A Manual for Taxpayers (free download at
yankeeinstitute.org).
He is very
passionate about the need for every school district to have a volunteer,
Citizen Audit Committees to constrain the tax burden on taxpayers by providing
oversight of school spending using performance review criteria and best
practice systems. He provides
orientation and training at no cost to any taxpayer group interested in forming
a Citizen Audit Committee.
He, together
with board member Susan Lavelli-Hozempa, helped to
establish and train the first audit committee in Enfield, CT in January 2008;
six months later, it issued four professional and illuminating reports that can
be found on the Board of Education website.
What the Citizen Audit Committee demonstrated was that ordinary citizens
can identify waste and mismanagement of school resources.
Based on
current interest, there will be several new audit committees established this
year by taxpayer groups in other school districts.
Two new
manuals have just been developed for use by taxpayers: Citizen
Audit Committees: Providing Oversight to
Achieve Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness of School Resources, and School District:
Accountability, Transparency and Participation Index. Although not yet in
publication, both are available from Dr. Fusco at fusco.a@comcast.net.
The following
website will provide further insight into the accomplishments of Armand Fusco
and his vision for the future
http://ednews.org/articles/21679/1/An-Interview-with-Armand-Fusco-About-School-Corruption/Page1.html