Finding ref number: 2023-001 Finding caption: The District did not have adequate internal controls for ensuring compliance with allowable activities and costs, equipment and restricted purpose requirements. Name, address, and telephone of District contact person: Tim Papendorf, Information Services ...
Finding ref number: 2023-001 Finding caption: The District did not have adequate internal controls for ensuring compliance with allowable activities and costs, equipment and restricted purpose requirements. Name, address, and telephone of District contact person: Tim Papendorf, Information Services Supervisor 124 E. Lawrence Street, Mount Vernon, WA 98273 360-428-6110 Corrective action the auditee plans to take in response to the finding: Concern: The district failed to maintain sufficient documentation proving that the equipment provided to students matched their actual unmet needs. Reimbursement was sought based on estimated unmet needs rather than documented, actual unmet needs. Response: The Mount Vernon School District mandates that students use districtassigned devices for remote learning. According to grant training provided to the district, if students are required to use district-owned devices for remote learning, Chromebooks could be distributed to any student who did not have a district-assigned device that meets hardware standards. The standards used to assess the hardware included Chromebooks that were older than four years, unable to support the necessary software and digital learning tools, and devices at their end-of-life stage, meaning they no longer received automatic updates from Google. We assessed our inventory and supplied new Chromebooks to students based on our understanding of their needs. Chromebooks were only provided to students who lacked a device that met our hardware standards. Resolution: During this audit, the district learned that its understanding was inaccurate. However, we are confident our need exceeded our request. In May 2020, Page 71Office of the Washington State Auditor sao.wa.gov as directed by OSPI, the district conducted a survey which revealed that only 38% of our families had access to a device at home suitable for online learning. Given our students in poverty population was 4,365 during the 2022-23 school year, the 1,869 devices for which funding was requested only partially met our overall device needs. This audit has improved our understanding of the requirements related to verifying unmet needs. Moving forward, we will directly contact families and collect signatures to confirm their needs. These records will be attached to student profiles within our asset management system (Destiny) before ECF funded Chromebooks are assigned to them. Concern: Inventory records were incomplete, missing the names of 273 students assigned laptops funded by the ECF, thus failing to fully meet FCC documentation requirements. Response: The district acknowledges challenges related to student device assignment. Staff reductions and changes in our inventory and check-out processes necessitate updates and training, which is ongoing. We are committed to ensuring accurate and timely updates to our records. Resolution: A list of inventory discrepancies has been distributed, and action is being taken to update our records. To strengthen our existing systems, we will implement additional biannual training sessions with our inventory managers. These trainings will cover best practices for record keeping and emphasize the importance of maintaining accurate inventory records. We will conduct monthly audits of our records, and correction requests will be sent to individual sites to promptly address any information inaccuracies. Concern: MVSD lacked documentation to show that it only provided one device per student or location, leading to possible over-issuance of equipment. Response: While the district acknowledges the need to improve its student assignment inventory within Destiny, we have confirmed that only one device is assigned per student through the use of our additional inventory system (Google Workspace). Resolution: The district will enhance its inventory practices and explore additional redundancies to ensure effective contingencies if future data issues arise. Anticipated date to complete the corrective action: ● Unmet Needs Documentation: May 31, 2024 ● Inventory Update: June 20th, 2024 ● Staff Training: June 20th, 2024 (Ongoing)