Keith Kenyon did a lot for the North Kingstown athletic department and you’d be hard-pressed to find a parent or student in North Kingstown that would argue otherwise.

His career with North Kingstown spanned 24 years and as if the golden wall of fame in North Kingstown High School wasn’t proof enough, Kenyon’s supporters have been very vocal in recent weeks in their admiration for him. A member of the Providence Gridiron Club’s Hall of Fame, Kenyon raised the bar for athletes in North Kingstown. Several of his former players have said if it hadn’t been for Kenyon and football, they wouldn’t have had the drive to graduate high school.

On the flip side, it’s hard to buy into some of Kenyon’s “I didn’t know any better” explanations for some of the auditor’s findings.

Kenyon said that he wasn’t aware of all the rules governing the school activity account (i.e. the written guidelines revised in 2006) because he was on leave the year the guidelines were revised.

It’s a poor excuse. An unacceptable excuse.

Pleading ignorance will only get you so far. It was his job to know those guidelines. We find it hard to believe that an individual in charge of a multi-million dollar account wasn’t informed of the ground rules governing that account.

And if that is true, heaven help this school department and the taxpayers funding it.

But it’s not just Kenyon’s explanations we find questionable. North Kingstown High School Principal Gerald Foley’s “I didn’t know either” excuses are just as unacceptable.

According to the audit report, Foley signed multiple checks to multiple vendors only to say later he had never heard of those vendors. If a bill comes to your home from a company whose name and services are foreign to you, are going to just sign off on it? We doubt it.

What about if you were playing house with other people’s money, as is essentially the case here seeing as the checkbook is supplied by North Kingstown taxpayers — shouldn’t you be all the more careful about making sure you know where that money is going?

One point the auditor made over and over again Tuesday night was that the money in the activity account was “for the kids.” Its sole purpose was intended for students.

It shouldn’t have paid for tee sponsorships at golf tournaments, regardless of what organization was holding the tournament or holiday parties.

No one denies Keith Kenyon has done great things for NK athletics and students but that doesn’t excuse the questionable ethics and poor decisions this audit has shown he made.

And the ‘I didn’t know any better’ doesn’t fly here for Kenyon or Foley because they absolutely should have known better and we find it hard to believe they didn’t.