Brockton’s schools didn’t lose $18.3 million to fraud—they lost it to incompetence. Taxpayers then paid another $400,000 for audits that confirmed what families already knew: weak leadership, rubber-stamp oversight, and broken systems.

Massachusetts law already requires annual audits, but in Brockton they’ve become little more than check-the-box exercises. Numbers get reconciled, but problems never get fixed.

Stephen Pina’s Audit Reform Plan changes that. It makes audits enforceable, public, and tied to results—protecting classrooms, restoring trust, and holding leaders accountable.