Some errors found in schools’ audit

Published 8:17 pm Wednesday, August 31, 2011

A year after receiving a “perfect” audit from the Alabama Department of Public Examiners, the Dallas County School System received yet another solid report for the fiscal 2010 year, but it was “quite perfect.”

Officials with the state office detailed the findings to members of the Dallas County School Board during Monday’s meeting at Shiloh Elementary.

While the state agency found no fault with the system’s overall performance, there were a few areas they cited as findings. They also reported the system has already submitted a Corrective Action Plan with the state and changes are being made to fix those findings.

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“We have submitted a plan to the state and the changes have been put in place,” Dr. Fannie Major-McKenzie, superintendent of education for Dallas County Schools, said. “Even with these few findings, we are pleased with the unqualified report from the state auditors.”

In the audit, which was released by the state Friday, auditors brought attention to some problems involving the “revenues and expenditures” involving concessions sold to students during the school day and at “various extracurricular activities.”

Auditors said “at several schools, the transactions were not recorded separately and revenues and expenditures were comingled with other activities.”

In their corrective plan, the system said “all concessions activities will be monitored via the Principals’ report submitted monthly to the Central Office. Additional professional development will be provided to local bookkeepers to insure they understand how concessions revenues and expenditures are to be recorded.”

The auditors also cited the system for a problem it had in submitting payroll taxes on time to the IRS.

According to information in the audit, in March 2010, the board paid a penalty of $7,733.33 due to the board’s failure to remit payroll taxes for October 2009 by the required date.

In December 2009, the board paid a penalty in the amount of $38,559.84 due to failure to remit payroll taxes for June 2009 by the required date.

“A conference has been held with the payroll clerk to reiterate the importance of paying payroll taxes, as well as performing other duties related to processing the monthly payroll, on a timely basis,” the system added in their corrective plan. “Special attention will be paid to insure payroll taxes are remitted timely.”

The system was also cited for problems at two schools tested for failing to “verify accuracy of the Report of Sales of Tickets forms and reconcile the report total to the money turned in. Several of the reports tested for Dallas County High School and Keith High School did reconcile to the gate collections deposited.”

Also, they found that at Tipton Middle School, pre-numbered tickets were issued out of sequence for athletic events and the number of tickets reported as sold did not match with the money deposited.
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