Above Photo: Salem High School taken by NOSC Staff in the past
Article by Dana DiFilippo, New Jersey Monitor
August 21, 2026
(Article republished on NOSC. Originally published by New Jersey Monitor at https://newjerseymonitor.com/2026/08/21/high-school-overseas-trip-watchdog-report/)
SALEM — Students at Salem High School with an interest in global affairs have long gotten a pricey perk: all-expenses-paid trips to faraway places that have included Scotland, Portugal, and the Czech Republic.
State auditor David K. Kaschak flagged the unique benefit in 2024, advising Salem City’s school district to require students in its “international baccalaureate” program to pay their own way for the annual excursions that averaged $3,900 per pupil. Last month, he repeated that recommendation, noting in a new compliance report that the district continued to cover the full cost of the trips from its general fund — and had ignored more than a dozen other belt-tightening recommendations.
Thursday, Salem City School District Superintendent Carol L. Kelley told the New Jersey Monitor that future trips will not be funded by taxpayers and that the district “understands the State Auditor’s concern” and will pay for the trips through “grants, partnerships, fundraising, and other outside resources.”
But a state legislator who sits on the Senate’s budget committee said the district’s compliance failures are troubling and deserve legislative attention.
After Kaschak first revealed his findings in 2024, Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), the GOP budget officer in the Senate, wrote to the state attorney general and other state officials to demand a criminal investigation into Salem City schools. He also called on his colleagues in Trenton to expand state funding to ensure more school districts get audited.
He reupped those demands this week, saying full, timely compliance with the auditor’s recommendations is a reasonable expectation of any auditee, particularly when taxpayers’ money is at risk of waste or abuse.
“It’s outrageous,” O’Scanlon said. “It is time to revisit. We need more money for the audits, and more audits, and more teeth.”
Salem City school officials have “an obligation to be accountable for their decisions and to the taxpayers who are funding their jobs,” he added.
Kaschak examined Salem City schools because he’s tasked with auditing state departments to ensure efficiency and accountability in government operations and the proper spending of public funds.
For schools, his office is authorized to audit any district that reports a budget deficit, as well as the 31 low-wealth districts that get at least 80% of their funding from the state.
Salem City School District fit both categories, reporting a $621,000 deficit in 2019 that initially triggered Kaschak’s review. The district got $25.7 million in K-12 state funding this year for its 1,100 students, about 72% of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch.
The free travel was just one of multiple deficiencies Kaschak reported in 2024 after scrutinizing Salem schools’ finances between 2018 and 2023.
He identified problems with procurement, employee reimbursements and leave, healthcare eligibility determinations, nonresident students, outside groups’ use of school facilities, and athletic fund purchases, among other things.
The more eye-popping spending included $115,650 paid to colleges and universities for tuition, room, and board for eight former Salem City students; $103,075 paid to students as an incentive to attend an exam-preparation course; $68,921 on travel for the football team; and $45,315 for athletic championship jackets and rings.
To send the international baccalaureate students overseas, the district spent an average of $75,000 per trip on five trips Kaschak scrutinized — and about $35,000 for booked airfare and accommodations that no one used. He also found that one adult chaperone went for every three students even though the hosting organization provided chaperones, most of the Salem chaperones did not stay with the students during the trips, several chaperones’ spouses also got free trips, and some trips and spending never got school board approval as required.
At the same time, he found the program had a graduation rate of just 12%, lagging far behind the 84% average of similar programs elsewhere.
Altogether, he tallied over $1 million in spending he found objectionable. He also determined the district collected at least $1 million in overpayments of state aid in 2022, 2023, and 2024, due to errors in pupil counts.
He issued 58 recommendations for Salem City administrators to avoid future deficits and better safeguard district funds.
In a compliance check completed in March and released last month, Kaschak found that the district had not complied with 13 of his recommendations, partially complied with another 23, and fully complied with 20. Two recommendations were deemed “not applicable” in July’s report.
Kelley defended her district Thursday, saying those figures represent a 76.8% implementation rate.
Many of the problematic practices Kaschak and his team identified predate the district’s current leaders, she added. Kelley took over the top job at Salem City School District in January 2025, 14 months after she resigned from a tumultuous two-year tenure at Princeton Public Schools.
“The current administration remains focused on resolving outstanding findings,” Kelley said. “The district recognizes its responsibility to maintain strong internal controls, comply with applicable laws and regulations, and ensure that public resources are used appropriately, efficiently, and transparently.”
The district’s international baccalaureate program is part of a global effort to promote intercultural understanding, with about 6,200 schools in 160 countries participating, according to the Switzerland-based nonprofit that leads it.
Salem administrators acknowledged to Kaschak in 2024 that they knew of no other districts that covered the trips’ entire price tag. But they insisted it was “worth the cost” because the district is economically disadvantaged and many attendees had never previously ventured out of the area and couldn’t afford to travel.
But Thursday, Kelley reversed course, telling the New Jersey Monitor that future trips will be funded from a $100,000 grant from the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. That’s a Catholic order based in Englewood Cliffs to which Sister Carol Adams, a longtime Salem City school board member and the current board vice president, belongs.
The district, though, did pay for trips for international baccalaureate students this year. School board members approved spending nearly $10,000 total on trips to Prague in April for two students and one chaperone and to Wildwood in June for 10 students and three chaperones, meeting minutes show.
Kaschak declined to comment on Salem City schools’ compliance with his recommendations, saying he prefers to let his reports speak for themselves.
As for O’Scanlon’s call for more state funding for audits, Kaschak said that’s an issue for policymakers to decide.
But he agreed the public money flowing out of Trenton warrants closer scrutiny.
“We couldn’t possibly do everything that the statute empowers us to do. We have to work within our existing resources,” he said, adding, “If that issue is raised again, I’d be willing to discuss that with any legislator.”
Original story was published at: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2026/08/21/high-school-overseas-trip-watchdog-report/
New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.
