Finding Text
2022-010 Federal Agency: Federal Communication Commission Pass Thru Entity: Universal Service Administrative Company Program: COVID-19 Emergency Connectivity Fund Program Assistance Listing: 32.009 Grant Period: Year ending June 30, 2022 Condition: Devices/Services acquired with federal funds were not tracked to appropriate population of unmet needs. Criteria: FCC-ECF Program is to fund devices and services must be used primarily for off-campus educational purposes and by students, school staff with otherwise unmet needs; Who would otherwise lack access to connected device and/or broadband connectivity sufficient to engage in remote learning. Also requires that on device and service per user. 47 CFR 54.1715 Records retention?a) equipment and service inventory requirements. Schools, libraries and consortia shall keep asset and service inventories identified with the eligible student or staff member. Cause: The District failed to properly track the devices/services to the eligible population. Effect: The expenditures may be disallowed. Context: All expenditures related to the purchasing of devices or services were tested. 3900 Devices were purchased, and 1,877 devices were found not to be in compliance resulting in questioned costs of $557,333. Services provided of 5 months were not tracked and resulted in $90,531 of questioned costs. Questioned Costs: $647,864 Repeat Finding from Prior Year: No Recommendation Assets acquired with federal funds need to be tracked following the guidelines of the award. The District needs to develop procedures to identify devices/services are distributed to eligible students/staff as required by program. Views of Responsible Officials And Planned Corrective Action: Lawton Public Schools procedures require tracking of items with an acquisition cost of $5,000 or higher. These one-time FCC-ECF funds included specific criteria requiring specific tracking of all purchases including hotspots. These criteria were not identified immediately by the district. The district has updated procedures to include the tracking of all of these items even though they do not have an acquisition cost of $5,000 or higher.