Southtowns Record

Lackawanna City School District - Tuition (2019M-59)

Government
Lackawanna City School District
Posted by publisher
Jun 7, 2019
Kind
State audit
Topics
Audits and oversight, Budget and taxes

Publisher's summary

School districts are required to pay tuition for resident students attending charter schools or receiving special education services from other public or private schools. We recalculated tuition costs and full-time equivalents (FTEs) using attendance records for charter school students and special education students' individualized education programs (IEPs) to verify that the District was billed for the correct services and frequency. We found that tuition was incorrectly calculated for nine students. The District was overbilled $5,300 for eight charter school students. The billing school used the correct rate for those students but used the incorrect FTE to calculate the tuition, resulting in overbilling. Additionally, the District was underbilled by a private school $900 for one special education student. The billing school used the incorrect rate when calculating tuition. We also found that the District did not have adequate and up-to-date residency information to support tuition charges totaling $2.5 million for 162 students (77 percent) attending charter schools and other public or private schools. The District had no registration or residency information on file for 44 of these students and registration information that was out-of-date and/or incomplete for the remaining 118 students.

Original document

Text · page 5 of 11

incorrectly calculated for nine students. The District was overbilled $5,300 for
eight charter school students. The billing school used the correct rate for those
students but used the incorrect FTE to calculate the tuition, resulting in overbilling.
Additionally, the District was underbilled by a private school $900 for one special
education student. The billing school used the incorrect rate when calculating
tuition.

Although the account clerk and claims auditor reviewed tuition invoices, they did
not use attendance records to ensure FTEs were calculated correctly. As a result,
the District paid $5,300 more in tuition than it should have for eight students
and underpaid one school $900 for one student. Had District officials developed
procedures describing the protocols for conducting a deliberate and thorough
review of tuition bills, these calculation errors may have been detected and
corrected prior to payment. The Assistant Superintendent indicated that his staff is
reviewing 2018-19 bills for accuracy and plans to work with the schools to correct
any errors identified.

Tuition Payments Were Not Supported by Sufficient Documentation
We reviewed residency documentation for a sample3 of 211 students (25 percent)
with tuition charges totaling $3.2 million (27 percent) to ensure these payments
were supported by sufficient residency documentation.

We found that the District did not have adequate and up-to-date residency
information to support tuition charges totaling $2.5 million for 162 students (77
percent) attending charter schools and other public or private schools. The District
had no registration or residency information on file for 44 of these students and
registration information that was out-of-date and/or incomplete for the remaining
118 students.

We asked the District to obtain current residency information from the charter
schools that billed the District and were provided with residency documentation
for all students attending charter schools. We also verified residency of special
education students by reviewing transportation logs and student IEPs and found
no exceptions.

The Assistant Superintendent told us that the District did not have written policies
or procedures in place for collecting updated residency for charter school
students. During our fieldwork, the District began requesting updated residency
information from all of the charter schools for the 2018-19 school year. The

3 See Appendix B Audit Methodology and Standards for information on the sample selection process.

  Of f ic e of t he New York State Comptroller  3