HONOLULU, Hawaii – Hawaii public school officials are once again taking heat over how the statewide district has been wasting money, particularly during an extended budget crisis.

The latest scandal came to light this winter, when KHON2 television station revealed that Hawaii’s Department of Education spent nearly $1 million on employee time clocks that were never used, and are now cast aside in a break room at the Kapolei state building.

“In May 2010, a decision was made to implement time clocks to better monitor and have more accountability of our employees,” DOE spokesperson Donalyn Dela Cruz told the news site.

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“Fast forward to 2012 when we had new leadership come in and it still hadn’t been implemented, and the reason for that was there were other things that needed to be attached to the time clocks.”

Those other things – like software, wires, and labor to install the devices – would cost an additional $6 million that district officials didn’t budget for.

“All of that added up in terms of cost outside of just the time clocks,” Dela Cruz told KHON. “And therefore our leadership decided not to pursue this anymore.”

Unfortunately the time clock vendor doesn’t seem very receptive to working with officials for a refund or credit.

“When asked about a refund, exchange or even a credit toward future state buys, the company cited customer privacy and didn’t comment further,” according to the news site.

The bungled time clock purchase was the latest in a long history of financial mismanagement in Hawaii schools, which are run as one large statewide school district.

And the waste is even more inexcusable with the school district wallowing in a prolonged budget crisis.

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In 2009, Hawaii public school officials created the shortest academic year in the nation by cutting 17 instructional days from the calendar in an effort to balance the district budget.

The deal, negotiated with the state’s teachers union, also cut employee pay by 8 percent , but left teachers’ vacation, holidays and other paid days off intact, the Associated Press reported.

Despite the cuts, the district continued to face serious budget issues.

In 2012 Hawaii lawmakers cut state education funding by 5.5 percent, reducing state K-12 aid by a total of 20 percent through the national recession, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In 2014, there were talks of cutting $9.2 million in special education spending to make ends meet, Civil Beat reports.

Yet through all the years of belt tightening, the wasteful spending continued.

In 2012 the state auditor released a procurement audit that showed spending limits on school credit cards were often ignored, as were spending limits on purchase orders, and the district’s purchase records were mostly incomplete and haphazard.

That investigation was forwarded to the state Attorney General’s Criminal Division because the violations were so wasteful, according to Watchdog.org.

And wastefulness is just part of the problem.

In 2013, the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank, awarded Hawaii’s Department of Education an F-minus for financial transparency. District officials created a financial mess, but weren’t very open about it.

That’s why the public, and even many of Hawaii’s K-12 education leaders, were largely unaware of the time clock boondoggle until recent media reports, and it’s serving as a prime example of the need for increased financial transparency.

“We weren’t aware of it,” Hawaii Government Employees Association executive director Randy Pereira told KHON. “It’s somewhat of a surprise to us. It’s an interesting and curious expenditure.”

Dela Cruz said “going forward, anything that’s going to cost a lot of money we have to budget so the legislature would know and the superintendent would have to sign off on it.”

It’s about time.