FRANKFORT, Ill. – A former superintendent of Illinois’ Lincoln-Way School District 210 is earning scorn from parents and taxpayers after a local news investigation revealed he racked up $30,000 in credit card debt before leaving cash-strapped district.

The Daily Southtown investigation into school spending records also showed former superintendent Lawrence Wyllie spent nearly $45,000 without board approval to renovate a barn for a dog training school for his Australian shepherds.

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Locals are particularly outraged by the spending revelations after the school board recently moved to close one school and dismiss 31 staff members and three permanent substitutes to save an estimated $2.5 million to help keep the district afloat, The Herald-News reports.

Records showed Wyllie charged expensive dinners and overnight stays at downtown San Antonio hotels, hundreds of leadership books purchased through Amazon, thousands of dollars in sweaters and other clothing, a $106 teddy bear for his office and other items. In total, The Daily Southtown identified $29,566 in questionable purchases over the superintendent’s last three years on the job, as the district’s finances circled the drain.

“He should’ve been watching his expenditures knowing that the district had financial problems,” said Steve Eberhardt, lawyer for Lincoln-Way Area Taxpayers Unite, a group devoted to a legal battle against closing a local high school.

Wyllie served as superintendent of Lincoln-Way schools from 1989 until 2013 and now takes home the biggest teacher pension in the state of Illinois at $312,081, according to the news site.

“District credit cards and taxpayers dollars should be spent for our students, for our children. That I what the money is set aside for,” parent Elizabeth Burghard told Fox 32 of Wyllie’s credit card purchases. “And as a parent, as a taxpayer, that is theft.”

“You know it’s ridiculous,” local Chris Zimmerman said. “And on the face you want to laugh about it but then you really want to cry.”

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The news site reports the school district was laced on the state’s “financial watch list” in 2015 following years of financial decline and previously announced plans to close a North high school. When the school board approved the layoffs this week, Lincoln-Way Education Association President Tim Conway pointed to the district’s overall ineptitude in financial and business matters for true reason for the cuts, the Herald-News reports.

“It is symbolic, it represents the mismanagement of public dollars, it represents a way of conducting business that should never been allowed, it represents students losing their teachers, it represents an increase in class size that will diminish the educational opportunities for students,” he said.

Conway blamed the school board for enabling unreasonable spending like Wyllie’s credit card purchases through a lack of oversight and due diligence, and insinuated it’s a problem that will haunt the district into the future.

“The teachers that have been let go came to this district because of the excellent reputation this district has enjoyed for many years,” he said. “Who will now want to apply to District 210?”