Finding Text
Assistance Listing, Federal Agency, and Program Name - 10.553 and 10.555, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Child Nutrition Cluster
Federal Award Identification Number and Year - 231970, 241970, 231960, 241960, 220910, 230910, and 240910
Pass-through Entity - Michigan Department of Education
Finding Type - Material weakness
Repeat Finding - No
Criteria - The School District must submit monthly claims for reimbursement for meals served to eligible students within 60 days following the last day of the month covered by the claim (7 CFR sections 210.8, 220.11, 215.10, and 225.15 (c)). Upon preparation of meal reimbursement claims, the School District is required to have controls in place to ensure the accuracy of the request for reimbursement.
Condition - For certain periods during the year the School District asserts there was a review process in place over the reimbursement requests; however, the review was not documented, and therefore we were not able to verify if the control was in place and operating effectively. For other periods during the year, the School District did not have a control in place where a review of the meal counts entered into the Michigan Nutrition Data (MiND) system takes place, which could result in incorrect reporting of the number of free and reduced priced meals, which could result in the School District being reimbursed an incorrect amount by the Michigan Department of Education.
Cause and Effect - The absence of a secondary review comparing meal data from the School District's meal tracking point of sale system to the inputs into to MiND system means that if an error was made by the person submitting the claim, it would not be caught and the School District would be reimbursed an incorrect amount by the Michigan Department of Education.
Recommendation - The School District should implement a control where the monthly reimbursement request is reviewed and approval is documented to ensure the submission is mechanically accurate and that it agrees with the School District’s internal meal claims data report.
Views of Responsible Officials and Corrective Action Plan - The School District's business office performed a detailed review of all meal claim submissions for the 2023-2024 fiscal year. Ultimately, the lack of a review control during the 2023-2024 fiscal year did not result in inaccurate reporting or incorrect amount of reimbursement paid by the Michigan Department of Education. The Business Office has since implemented a formalized internal control procedure beginning in July 2024, whereby a formal documented review of the meal claim submission is performed.