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