What had typically been a routine vote to renew the contract of Baltimore School Board Chief Auditor Andrea Barr was anything but typical this time around. The school board effectively fired Barr, who had been the chief auditor for 36 years, when several members simply abstained from voting.
In a meeting last month, only six of the 12 members voted to retain her while the others abstained or recused themselves. It took seven votes to renew her contract. There was no public discussion by the school board before it took the vote and no statement on the reasoning for not renewing Barr’s contract.
Retribution?
Yet critics of the move site actions by Barr that put the board in a unflattering light for her ouster. In 2019, the auditor complained about a hostile work environment created by two board members. In 2020, her office released an internal audit which showed school board members misspent taxpayer money and overspent its budget.
The most recent vote ousting her could be seen as a parting shot from a school board, since nearly all members are finishing their final terms and leaving the board. A consultant has described their operation as “dysfunctional.”
“I think they’re making a terrible mistake,” David Uhlfelder, who served on the school board for 10 years and left in 2018, told Baltimore’s WYPR News National Public Radio station. For seven of those years he chaired the board’s audit committee. Uhlfelder described Barr as “outstanding, thorough, and committed.” 