School Fiscal Check-Up Is Positive

A draft audit of San Diego Unified gave the school district a clean bill of health, with only six problems noted. That is an improvement over the last audit, which noted 13 problems, all but one of which have now been addressed, according to auditors.

Among its findings:

• Associated Student Body funds are poorly monitored and documented, and though no fraud was detected, the lack of adequate minutes for student councils and documentation of receipts and deposits could make it vulnerable to financial foul play.
• Schools sometimes purchase goods or services without filling out a purchase order, creating a risk that goods could be ordered twice or the expense might not show up on the budget.
• Staffers are misreporting attendance numbers for a state program that allows schools to get attendance funding for students on short-term or temporary independent study, claiming more than 5,000 days of student attendance improperly, or a total of $262,196 in funding. (There were no problems noted with long-term independent study.) That is an error rate of 25 percent. Auditors chalked up the problem to inadequate training for staffers and a lack of monitoring of short-term independent study contracts.

One audit finding recurred from last year to this year: Employees are occasionally overpaid, partially due to a system that allows them to be compensated in advance. One of the recommended solutions, changing the pay cycle so that payments do not start until an employee is working, would require bargaining with employee unions.

— EMILY ALPERT