JANESVILLE – Public anger in Janesville over the coming weeks and months will obviously be directed toward Jessica Warner-Reed, 33, a former clerical employee at Cregg High School.

She was arrested Tuesday for the alleged embezzlement of more than $300,000 from various student activity funds, according to various news sources.

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Warner-Reed was in charge of collecting fees from 140 clubs, teams and groups affiliated with the school, according to Channel3000.com.

She was “arrested on suspicion of embezzlement of more than $10,000, misconduct in public office, 10 counts of forgery and six counts of tax fraud. She turned herself in on Tuesday. She’s scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 25,” the news service reported.

But how will citizens – particularly parents and taxpayers – react toward school officials?

While it’s certainly a crime to steal from schools and the students they serve, many would argue that administrators are also guilty of gross negligence when it occurs, particularly when the dollar figure is huge and the alleged theft appears to have occurred over a lengthy period of time.

The police investigation in Janesville involves documents going back as far as 2006, according to Channel3000,com.

There were seven witnesses listed on police reports, and three of them “handle district finances in the central office,” according to the Janesville Gazette.

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“She was able to either remove cash or on 10 occasions she made out a check to either herself or her husband and deposited it into her bank account,” Janesville Police Chief David Moore told Channel3000.com.

Will citizens demand that school administrators devise a better accountability plan, to greatly diminish the odds of it happening again? Will they ask school officials if stolen funds are insured, and if not, how the money will be replaced?

As it stands, “district funds were used to restore accounts to their determined balances as of Aug. 1, 2015,” Channel3000.com reported

While it’s too early to tell whether school officials can be pardoned to any degree for allowing the alleged theft to occur, early answers provided by Janesville Superintendent Karen Schulte don’t seem to offer much comfort.

When asked in September, after the police investigation was first reported by the media, if there would be changes in money-handling procedures at the schools, “Schulte said those changes would be handled by the business office,” according to the Janesville Gazette.

After such a huge loss of money, she wasn’t planning to personally oversee changes in procedures to avoid another incident?

When asked whether they would be a special audit done by an outside firm in relation to any missing funds, Schulte said, “There has been a review of how money is collected and distributed, as we do, I think every year or every couple of years. We train staff because new staff comes in, and we make sure all policies and procedures are followed,” according to the Gazette.

Schulte added that the district has “extensive procedures regarding activity funds,” the newspaper reported.

“We want to make sure people are following the proper protocol,” she was quoted as saying.

If the charges against Warner-Reed are true, it seems pretty clear that the “extensive procedures regarding activity funds” were ineffective and “proper protocol” was not followed, perhaps for many years.

If that’s the case, either Warner-Reed was remarkably clever, or some people who were supposed to be watching were asleep at the switch.