Audit Objective
Did East Rochester Union Free School District (District) officials properly manage and monitor building access accounts and devices?
Audit Period
July 1, 2024 – November 30, 2025
We extended our audit period to April 14, 2026, to review access activity logs.
Understanding the Audit Area
Building access controls are essential for enhancing security and enabling school officials to manage and monitor entry points within educational institutions. These systems authenticate a user through devices such as key fobs, keycards, badges, or similar technologies, helping to ensure only authorized individuals can enter school buildings. By limiting access in this way, schools can better safeguard their facilities and maintain a safe and secure environment for students, teachers, staff and visitors.
The District utilizes a building access management system (system) with 983 active building access accounts (accounts), including 337 devices issued to current employees and 646 issued to non-employees, of which 51 are shared devices.1 The District’s one school building has a single public point of entry. Employees may also access the building through additional secured entry points, which require a device for entry.
Audit Summary
District officials did not properly manage and monitor building access accounts and devices (badges). As a result, there was a potential risk for unauthorized access to the District school building, compromising building security and safety for students, teachers, staff and visitors. Specifically, of the accounts we reviewed, the District had active, but unneeded, accounts with assigned badges in the system:
- 88 individuals, including 62 employees and 26 non-employees had duplicate active badges, including 17 employees and four non-employees with three or more active badges.
- 126 badges (20 percent) of 646 non-employee accounts were unneeded.
- District officials could not locate 28 out of 52 (54 percent) requested badges.
Although District officials had an informal process for adding accounts in the system for employees and non-employees, no one periodically reviewed active accounts to determine whether they were needed. Furthermore, these issues occurred because District officials did not develop written policies and procedures for issuing and monitoring badges that clearly assign the roles and responsibility for managing and monitoring accounts.
This report includes four recommendations that, if implemented, will help District officials improve management and monitoring of building access accounts and badges. District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and their response is included in Appendix B. Appendix C includes our comments on issues raised in the District’s response.
This audit was conducted pursuant to Article V, Section 1 of the State Constitution and the Office of the New York State Comptroller’s (OSC’s) authority as set forth in Article 3 of the New York State General Municipal Law (GML). The audit’s methodology and standards are included in Appendix D.
The Board of Education (Board) has the responsibility to initiate corrective action. A written corrective action plan (CAP) that addresses the findings and recommendations in this report must be prepared and provided to OSC within 90 days, pursuant to Section 35 of GML, Section 2116-a (3)(c) of the New York State Education Law and Section 170.12 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education. To the extent practicable, implementation of the CAP must begin by the end of the next fiscal year. For more information on preparing and filing the CAP, please refer to the OSC brochure, Responding to an OSC Audit Report, which was provided with the draft audit report. The CAP should be posted on the District’s website for public review.
1 A shared account or device is assigned to a user for a specific role or function but not assigned to a specific individual (e.g., vendors or first responders).