Compliance Requirement: Allowable Costs/Cost Principles Internal Control Impact: Significant Deficiency Compliance Impact: Nonmaterial Noncompliance Federal Awarding Agency: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pass-Through Entity: Georgia Department of Education Assistance Listing Number and Title: 10.553 – School Breakfast Program 10.555 – National School Lunch Program Federal Award Number: 255GA324N1199 (Year: 2025) Questioned Costs: $7,474 Repeat of Prior Year Finding: FA 2024-001, FA 2023-004 Description: The policies and procedures of the School District were insufficient to provide adequate internal controls over the employee compensation process as it relates to the Child Nutrition Cluster. Background Information: The Child Nutrition Cluster (CNC) is comprised of various programs that are intended to assist states in administering and overseeing food service program operators that provide healthful, nutritious meals to eligible children in public and non-profit private schools, residential childcare institutions, and summer programs. This Cluster of programs also fosters healthy eating habits in children by providing fresh fruits and fresh vegetables to children attending elementary and secondary schools and encourages the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities. CNC funding was granted to the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. GaDOE is responsible for distributing funds to local educational agencies (LEAs) and overseeing the various CNC programs. CNC funds totaling $60,051,234.81 were expended and reported on the DeKalb County Board of Education’s Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards (SEFA) for fiscal year 2025. Criteria: As a recipient of federal awards, the School District is required to establish, document, and maintain effective internal control over federal awards that provides reasonable assurance of managing the federal awards in compliance with federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the federal awards pursuant to Title 2 U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 200, Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (Uniform Guidance), Section 200.303 – Internal Controls. Provisions included in the Uniform Guidance, Section 200.403 – Factors Affecting Allowability of Costs state that “costs must meet the following general criteria in order to be allowable under Federal awards: (a) Be necessary and reasonable for the performance of the Federal award and be allocable thereto under these principles. (b) Conform to any limitations or exclusions set forth in these principles or in the Federal award as to types or amount of cost items. (c) Be consistent with policies and procedures that apply uniformly to both federally-financed and other activities of the recipient or subrecipient… (g) Be adequately documented…” Furthermore, provisions included in the Uniform Guidance, Section 200.430 – Compensation-Personal Services prescribe standards for documentation of personnel expenses and state, in part, that “(a) … Costs for compensation are allowable to the extent that they satisfy… specific requirements… and that the total compensation for individual employees: (1) Is reasonable for the services rendered and conforms to the established written policy of the recipient or subrecipient consistently applied to both Federal and non-Federal activities; (2) Follows an appointment made in accordance with a recipient’s or subrecipient’s laws, rules or written policies and meets the requirements of Federal statute, where applicable; and (3) Is determined and supported as provided in paragraph (g)…, [as follows:] (g) Charges to Federal awards for salaries and wages must be based on records that accurately reflect the work performed. These records must: (i) Be supported by a system of internal control that provides reasonable assurance that the charges are accurate, allowable, and properly allocated; (ii) Be incorporated into the official records of the recipient or subrecipient…” Condition: A sample of 60 employees was randomly selected for testing using a non-statistical sampling approach. These employees were reviewed to determine if internal controls were properly functioning, and applicable compliance requirements were met. The following deficiencies were noted: • One employee was paid on the incorrect pay scale and thus was overpaid by $4,903. • Two employees were paid on the incorrect pay scale and thus were underpaid by $1,287. • Additional pay totaling $967 for 2 employees was incorrectly charged to the federal program. • Documentation of retrospective pay totaling $317 could not be located for 1 employee. Questioned Costs: Upon testing a sample of $1,643,657 in personnel services expenditures, known questioned costs of $7,474 were identified for payroll charges not supported by adequate documentation. Using the total personnel services expenditure population of $20,618,901 (excluding benefits payments), we project the likely questioned costs to be approximately $93,759. The following Assistance Listing Numbers were affected by known and likely questioned costs: 10.553 and 10.555. Cause: A lack of oversight by personnel in the Office of Federal Grants and Program Compliance led to noncompliance with the requirements of the Uniform Guidance in relation to charging of personnel costs to a federal program. Effect: The School District is not in compliance with the Uniform Guidance and GaDOE guidance. Failure to pay employees with CNC funds the appropriate amount and/or maintain documentation supporting those payments could result in the expenditure of funds for unallowable purposes. This may also expose the School District to unnecessary financial strains and shortages within the CNC funds as ED or GaDOE may require the School District to return funds associated with improperly documented expenditures. Recommendation: The School District should evaluate their internal control process related to the approval and retention of documentation to support employee compensation payments. Where vulnerable, the School District should develop and/or modify its policies and procedures to ensure that CNC employees are paid appropriately. Furthermore, management should develop and implement a monitoring process to ensure that these procedures are functioning properly. Views of Responsible Officials: The District acknowledges the audit team’s findings regarding undocumented additional pay and the isolated instances of overpayment identified during the testing of School Food Nutrition program. While the District remains committed to absolute fiscal accuracy, we believe the following context is essential for a complete understanding of the program’s scale and the nature of the identified error. • Scale of Operations: The District’s School Food Nutrition program is a massive operation, serving over 90,000 students across 124 separate kitchens. This decentralized environment requires the management of approximately 900 personnel and a total salary expenditure of $20,618,901. • Statistical Significance vs. Actual Error: The audit identified actual errors totaling $7,474. While the District understands that federal auditing standards (Uniform Guidance) require this amount to be extrapolated across the entire $20.6M population-resulting in a projected error exceeding the $25,000 mandatory reporting threshold-it is important to note that the actual identified discrepancy represents only 0.036% of the program’s personnel budget. • Accuracy Rate: Even when utilizing the extrapolated figure of $25,000, the District maintains a 99.64% accuracy rate in payroll processing for this program. We believe this demonstrates a robust internal control environment, particularly given the complexities of managing 124 distinct points of service. • Disproportionate Reporting Thresholds: The District notes that the $25,000 reporting threshold is a fixed statutory limit that does not scale with the size of the Local Educational Agency (LEA). Consequently, a District of our size is held to a significantly more compressed margin of error (less than one-eighth of one percent) than a smaller district with fewer employees and sites. Auditor’s Concluding Remarks: While the questioned costs identified by auditors appear to be relatively small in the context of the School District’s overall School Nutrition expenditures, the amounts exceed the reporting threshold established by the Uniform Guidance. This threshold is designed to ensure consistent reporting of noncompliance across entities of all sizes. Given the information reflected above, we reaffirm our finding and will review the status of the finding during our next audit.