Finding 5674 (2023-001)

8. Criteria or specific requirement (including statutory, regulatory, or other citation) The District must submit monthly reimbursement claims for meals (both breakfast and lunch) served to eligible students. Accurate records must be maintained justifying all meals claimed. 9. Condition The District submitted claims which reported meals greater than what the supporting documentation reflected. In one instance, the counts for lunch and breakfast were reported opposite (lunch was reported as breakfast and breakfast as lunch). 10. Questioned Costs The program is funded based on eligible meals at the established reimbursement rate. Due to the errors identified, the District received excess funding. The exact amount of questioned costs was not determined. 11. Context We selected four months as our sample size to test for reporting. Errors were identified in two of the months selected (August 2022 and February 2023). 12. Effect The situation resulted in the District receiving excess funding from the Child Nutrition Cluster. 13. Cause District personnel incorrectly entered amounts into the monthly reimbursement claim reporting. 14. Recommendation We recommend that management heighten their review of the claims submission prior to its submittal to ISBE in order to identify errors. 15. Management's response Management agrees with the finding and has indicated that they will work with ISBE to correct this situation.