Committee Report | October 2012

Report of

REGENTS AUDITS/BUDGET AND FINANCE COMMITTEE

to

The Board of Regents

October 10, 2012

The Regents Committee on Audits/Budget and Finance met as scheduled this morning, October 10, 2012. Regents Bendit, Brown, Cashin, Cea, Jackson, Phillips, Tallon, Tilles, and Young were in attendance.

Co-Chair’s Remarks:  Regent Chapey welcomed everyone and stated that economic challenges call us all to innovate and work as partners in developing new approaches to education reform. 

Items for Discussion

Proposed Audit Initiatives for the Office of Audit Services

The Committee was presented with a summary of the proposed audit initiatives to be undertaken by the Office of Audit Services in the next year (November 2012 to October 2013). The plan is to continue audits of school districts with new emphasis on Race to the Top funds, and School Improvement Grant funding. The plan also calls for new initiatives in the areas of compliance with Annual Professional Performance Reviews and Test Security.

The plan also calls for the audit of special education providers in order to enhance the Comptroller’s efforts and develop the expertise within SED. The remaining two initiatives will cover audits of non-profit recipients of Federal Funds and some Follow-up audits of those issued in the past several years.         

Completed Audits

The Committee was presented with 5 audits this month.  All of the audits were issued by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC).  The audits were of one charter school, three school districts and one BOCES.  

The findings were in the areas of procurement, claims processing, information technology, and capital construction.

September 2012 Fiscal Report

Our Executive Deputy Commissioner briefed the Committee members.


Overall spending in the General Fund reflects a 2.5 percent reduction from the 2011-2012 levels as included in the 2012-2013 enacted budget. The report reflects the beginning of the impact of new legislation that will enhance our proprietary school oversight. General Fund accounts are in structural balance with the exception of the Tenured Teacher Hearings (TTH). The report format related to the teacher tenure hearing account was changed to reflect the deficit coming from the prior year.  

Special Education Fiscal Oversight - Update


Department staff continues to work on putting forth specific recommendations related to reforming the oversight of special education providers. It is expected that some of the recommendations will be presented to the Regents in November. 

October 10, 2012