Superintendent Responds To Audits Critical Of School Spending

BURLINGTON, MA -- Burlington Public Schools will close inactive accounts used to collect money from students, adopt new policies and training procedures to administer student activity accounts, and complete a re-audit of the accounts during the summer of 2019, according to an action plan the school committee reviewed at its meeting on November 14. That document, as well as other documents related to the audit, were posted on the blog of Superintendent Eric Conti on Tuesday.

"The significant findings in the audit that require our immediate attention primarily involve the management processes associated with the accounts at elementary and middle school," Conti wrote. "Our assumption is that everyone is acting in the best interest of children."

The document dump comes after several speakers at the November 14 meeting asked the committee to post the documents online and offer more transparency on the audits that have revealed lax oversight of accounts used to collect money from students and parents for spending on everything from field trips to parties.

The audits -- one of student activity accounts and one of the performing arts fund -- were conducted over the summer by Roselli, Clark and Associates of Woburn after town meeting members put pressure on school officials to explain a massive deficit in the performing arts fund.

Among the findings in the audit of the music program:

• Tickets that were sold for cash on the day of the show were listed as "comp," or free tickets. The price those tickets were sold for was not recorded. The audit was unclear on whether or not receipts from those ticket sales were deposited into the account.
• A cash box the department keeps to make change for tickets sold on the night of performances was not recorded on the town's general ledger, meaning "at some point in the past these funds were collected and not turned over to the Town Treasurer."
• The auditors could not ascertain whether some money from fees charged to students was deposited back into the fund.
• The four-show Burlington Community Concert Series lost between $35,000 and $40,000 in fiscal year 2017. On average, the shows generated $6,000 in ticket sales while paying $10,000 in talent fees, on top of hotel, meal and transportation expenses. "These losses are one of the main drivers of the Revolving Fund deficit," the audit concluded.
• The district should not have paid for the deficit incurred for the concert series out of the fund, which is only to be used for extracurricular educational programs.

Among the findings in the audit of student activity accounts:

• There was no policy in place to handle how teachers collect cash from students to accounts, which numbered as many as 10 per school.
• In 20 years, many of the accounts had never been reconciled and the checking accounts had never been balanced.
• The school committee failed to turn over all of the information Roselli, Clark and Associates needed to complete a comprehensive audit.

"Following our action plan will address all of the findings in the audit in two years. We will ask Roselli, Clark and Associates to conduct another independent audit at that time," Conti wrote. "A two-year period is one-year sooner than the aforementioned three-year, external audit required by the new regulations."

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Patch file photo.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).