Audit Objective
Did Greene Central 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 June 3, 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, key cards, 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 350 active building access accounts (accounts) with 359 active devices, including 238 devices issued to current employees and 121 issued to non-employees, of which 67 are shared devices.1 Each of the District’s three school buildings, including the combined Junior/Senior High School, have a single public point of entry. Employees may also access the buildings 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 (key cards). As a result, there was a potential risk for unauthorized access to District school buildings, compromising building security and safety for students, teachers, staff and visitors. Specifically, the District had active, but unneeded, accounts with assigned key cards in the system:
- 18 employees had duplicate active key cards.
- Eight active non-employee key cards were not needed, including three key cards which District officials could not locate.
Although District officials had a 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 that clearly assign roles and define the responsibilities for managing and monitoring accounts or issuing key cards.
This report includes three recommendations that, if implemented, will help District officials improve management and monitoring of building access accounts and key cards. District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they plan to initiate corrective action. Appendix C includes our comment on an issue District officials raised in their 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).