Something is rotten in the cotton

JESCA (James E. Scott Community Association) is Miami's oldest social service organization run by blacks. Most of its board of directors are prominent members in Miami's black community. So why, pray tell, does Joe Arriola, a white Hispanic, need to bail out the organization?

It's humiliating that in 2007, blacks have added yet another master to which they must ask 'how high'? The message is that blacks can't run a business and govern themselves. @#$% This crap must stop. Several individuals must be held accountable for the predicament blacks are in today, especially the black community that allows the injustices to continue.

It's time for the black community at large to wake up and rise up. Too much money has been made at our expense for only a few to benefit. If you keep doing what you're doing, you're keep getting what you got.

Hotep!

Rashida

Community group faces loss of schools contract

Financial woes may cause one of the Southeast's oldest community groups to lose a county schools contract.

BY TANIA deLUZURIAGA
tdeluzuriaga@MiamiHerald.com


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Chronic financial problems may cause the James E. Scott Community Association to lose its contract with the Miami-Dade school district.

An audit released last week described a debt-riddled, cash-strapped agency with nearly $300,000 in overdue debt -- and twice as much in debts as in assets.

''JESCA, for all practical purposes, is in a state of financial emergency,'' chief auditor Allen Vann wrote in a memo to the School Board last week.

It was the third audit in a row to find financial problems in JESCA, one of Miami-Dade's oldest community organizations, which counts a county commissioner and a state representative among its managers.

School officials are not recommending a new contract for the group, which has provided alternative education programs for at-risk youth for at least the last decade.

At a School Board committee meeting on Thursday, JESCA managers, including County Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, blamed the organization's latest financial problems on slow cash flow, something they said afflicts many community-based organizations.

''We have to pay the bills now and wait for the money to come in,'' said Rolle, who joined JESCA in 1972 as a social worker and now earns $177,000 as its president and CEO.

Superintendent Rudy Crew recommended ending the group's contract with the district last year after audits revealed earlier financial problems. But the board rejected the request and instead approved a ''probationary contract'' for the Roving Leaders program, an alternative education program in Liberty City. [MORE]

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