New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today announced his office completed audits of the Beaver River Central School District, Clymer Central School District, Pittsford Central School District and the Renaissance Academy Charter School of the Arts.

State Comptroller DiNapoli has made it a priority to audit school district, BOCES and charter school finances and operations to ensure money is being spent appropriately and effectively. The Comptroller’s audits are designed to help schools improve their financial management practices and verify proper policies and procedures are in place to protect taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud and abuse. New York’s school districts annually spend approximately $60 billion in federal, state and local funds.

For additional background or a comment on a specific audit, please contact Brian Butry at 518-474-4015 or email: [email protected].

Beaver River Central School District – Payroll (Lewis County)

District officials have established adequate procedures to ensure the accuracy of salaries and wages paid to employees. The board approves all salaries and pay rates in the various contracts for the instructional, non-instructional and administrative employees at the district. At the beginning of each school year, the senior account clerk updates each individual employees’ salary, pay rate and leave accruals, as stated in their respective contracts, in the district’s financial system.

Clymer Central School District – Financial Management (Chautauqua County)

Although the district’s budget estimates were reasonable, the board and district officials allowed unrestricted fund balance to exceed the statutory limit for the past three fiscal years. As of June 30, 2015, unrestricted fund balance totaled $1.4 million and was 14 percent of the 2015-16 budgeted appropriations, exceeding the limit by 10 percentage points. Furthermore, the district has two reserves totaling $967,000 that may be overfunded. During fiscal years 2012-13 through 2014-15, district officials have increased the tax levy by an average of $82,000, or 2 percent annually, and increased the tax levy 1.5 percent for 2015-16.

Pittsford Central School District – Security of Personal, Private and Sensitive Information (PPSI) and Extracurricular Cash Records and Collections (Ontario County)

District officials need to improve their security policies and procedures. Auditors reviewed of 80 district-owned mobile computing devices disclosed PPSI on 16 of these devices. District officials have not developed a classification scheme or performed an adequate inventory of the PPSI stored on mobile devices. Unless the district officials identify all the PPSI maintained, it could be difficult to promptly notify the affected students and their families and other parties if a data security breach should occur. District officials also did not ensure that sufficient documentation was maintained for cash collections and pre-numbered cash receipts were issued for all money collected. Auditors identified 29 cash receipts totaling $17,577 that were not deposited within the three-day period allowed by district policy. In addition, the athletic director did not monitor or periodically reconcile the athletic event ticket inventory to account for the number of tickets sold. As a result of these discrepancies, district officials were unable to determine if all money collected was deposited.

Renaissance Academy Charter School of the Arts – Financial Operations (Monroe County)

The board designed an adequate system of controls by establishing policies and procedures for managing, accounting and reporting the school’s financial operations. However, the board should provide clearer guidance with respect to conflicts of interest as well as better oversight of school officials’ compliance with designed controls.

For access to state and local government spending and nearly 50,000 state contracts, visit OpenBookNY. The easy-to-use website was created by Comptroller DiNapoli to promote openness in government and provide taxpayers with better access to the financial workings of government.