Sunday, April 14, 2013

Former Berea schools treasurer accused of bilking district out of more than $28,000


http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/04/former_berea_schools_treasurer.html#incart_river

I decided to pick this article because it actually deals with the high school I attended (Berea High). I heard about this conflict earlier in the week from former classmates on social media and found the actual article while searching The Plain Dealer.

Berea City School District's former treasurer, Randal Scherf, has been accused of taking over $28,000 dollars from the district. He managed to do this by submitting fake documents of medical co-pays for reimbursements, as well as forging documents for his wife's reimbursements. The article also mentions that Scherf was formerly involved in a similar case with Fairborn School District. However, sources say he agreed to repay the district, avoiding any criminal charges that could have been filed against him.

I think this was a pretty decent article, although I feel like it was kind of confusing. I had to reread many parts to fully understand what was going on and who exactly the writer was referring to/talking about. What do you guys think? Did you like the format/way it was written? Do you find this article newsworthy?

12 comments:

  1. I think this article is newsworthy for the website it was published on. It is a local issue to the people of Cleveland and the people of Berea schools. Those people needed to be made aware of this issue, but it is not necessarily a state-wide or nation-wide issue. There were parts of the article I liked and parts I disliked. I liked how straight-forward and to the point the article was. It gave the facts of what happened without too much "fluff." I did not like how it seemed to jump around. It would mention people's names (liked Scherf and Langford) and then not expand on them until later. That made parts of the article confusing and hard to follow.

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  2. I agree with the "rereading" of the article, because I had to do the same thing. The topic was interesting, especially for those readers who attended the school. But the author was skipping from one person invovled to the next which caused the reading to be hard. I had to keep going back and rereading who the author was talking about. This is definietly newsworthy because of how much of an impact it has on the school distrcit and more. This brings up the question of trust to other school districts and maybe they need to investigate so this doesnt happen to their school district.

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  3. As far as do I find this article newsworthy, yes I do. Dealings or scandals within a school district is definitely information the public would want to hear about. I see where McKenzie was coming from as far as the article's confusion. I feel like there were too many names thrown out at times that it was hard to understand. You had to sometimes reread sentences. It was just a decent written article in my onion.

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  4. The article seemed choppy with information, meaning it was so full of facts that the writer didn't do a very good job melding them together (along with a few grammatical errors). The good part of this piece is the amount of information given, although there are pieces of information that seem to be left out. The writer provides enough evidence and history that it seems that the treasurer can only be assumed guilty. It is relevant news to our class and campus because of how many students from Cleveland attend OU. Was there enough information given on all that were accused and involved? Does the article seem biased or unbiased?

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  5. I agree with a lot of the comments made above. I definitely had to reread the article because the author jumped from person to person. The article is newsworthy because it is interesting, somewhat shocking and uncommon for a smaller school district. Details are plenty however it is easy to get them confused with the many charges being pressed against those involved. Overall it was a good topic but the article was mediocre at best.

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  6. I think the article is newsworthy because it directly affects everyone associated with Berea High School as well as the rest of the community. The article had a lot of facts, but I had to re-read some of the sentences to get a better understanding of what the author was saying. Other than that, it was pretty well-written and contained many important details relating to the incident.

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  7. I think that this story is newsworthy considering that it was published the the local newspaper, The Plain Dealer. I especially find it newsworthy because of the amount of money involved. Like others, I found this story a bit confusing. I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that there are so many names and titles in the article. I just got a bit lost in all the the people who were involved in the criminal proceedings.

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  8. The article was definitely newsworthy and potentially very interesting. However, it was hard to understand and connect with the content provided because I personally don't know anything about the Berea school district or know about anyone involved. This is definitely a regional issue, and the author could have posed other questions within the article to make it more appealing to a larger audience. I lost interest halfway through the article because the facts became very convoluted and boring.

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  9. What unconscionable behavior. Certainly newsworthy, and unfortunate for the students whose district's finances happened to be managed by an individual with little regard for people other than himself.
    I, personally, didn't find the article too terribly written, although I'll conceded I had to re-read a small portion of it. Unless you pay good attention, the article doesn't appear to be, at first glance, entirely cohesive.

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  10. I think this article is newsworthy, its presenting an issue to people that have an interest and stake in the issue. I enjoyed how it gave the facts straightforward but it was pretty choppy and seemed to jump back and forth which did make it a tiny bit confusing.

    I feel like they could have done a much better job telling this story and giving it context.

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  11. Reading this article made my head spin. The writer threw out name after name with random facts about him or her but it was just overwhelming. The writer should have concentrated on several main subjects in the incident rather that trying to talk about all of them. That fact that Randal Scherf had committed a similar act before somewhat sickens me. I would hope that he should face repercussions from both acts of fraud.

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