FINDING 2022-001 Information on the federal program: Subject: Special Education Cluster (IDEA) - Procurement Federal Agency: Department of Education Federal Program: Special Education Grants to States, Special Education Preschool Grants Assistance Listing Number: 84.027, 84.173 Pass-Through Entity: ...
FINDING 2022-001 Information on the federal program: Subject: Special Education Cluster (IDEA) - Procurement Federal Agency: Department of Education Federal Program: Special Education Grants to States, Special Education Preschool Grants Assistance Listing Number: 84.027, 84.173 Pass-Through Entity: Indiana Department of Education Compliance Requirement: Procurement and Suspension and Debarment Audit Finding: Significant Deficiency, Other Matters Criteria: 2 CFR section 200.303 states in part: "The non-Federal entity must: (a) Establish and maintain effective internal control over Federal award that provides reasonable assurance that the non-Federal entity is managing the Federal awards in compliance with Federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the Federal award. These internal controls should be in compliance with guidance in 'Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government' issued by the Comptroller General of the United States or the 'Internal Control Integrated Framework', issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO). . . ." Context: During testing of procurement over the Special Education Cluster, it was noted that the School Corporation did obtain an appropriate number of bids relating to Special Education consultants as required under small purchase procurement guidelines. There were two consultants charged to the Special Education Cluster during the audit period with expenses totaling $147,319. One of these consultants was selected during testing for procurement. The issue impacted both ALN 84.027 and 84.173. No issues were identified when testing suspension and debarment requirements. Views of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Actions: Management agrees with the finding. Due to the number of students we service with special needs, we often need to contract out for some of our Speech Language Pathology services. We currently have three contractors that provide outstanding services for us and we haven?t annually bid this out since the pool of providers is very small. In the future, we will document the process that we take to try to fill these spots with full time employees, how we request various pathologists from a multitude of vendors, and the decision making process to choose the contractor. We will review the rates provided by other potential contractors and seek School Board approval for whomever is the contracted vendor. Responsible party and timeline for completion: Our Director of Student Services, Rebecca Gromala, will oversee this corrective action plan. It is too late to make this correction for the current 2022-2023 school year. We anticipate this being corrected by September 1, 2023 for the 2023-2024 school year.