001the shows okay okay okay good evening everyone thank you Miss Barton for starting the recording the time is now 5 sorry 6:07 p.m. um I would like to call to order the March 3rd 2025 board audit committee meeting welcome everyone my name is Dr Tiffany anderl chair of this committee and the district one board member the primary purpose of Prince George's County Board of Education audit committee is to provide oversight of the financial reporting process the audit process the PGCPS system of internal controls and compliance with laws and regulations Welcome to our committee members and any other Board of Education members also I would like to welcome any other special guests which today it seems like we may have one as a panelist but any others joining us welcome we will now have introductions starting
002in this order board members administrative staff Board office staff and all other guests board member Brown hello thank you District Five board member excited to be here and thank you so much Miss simple for all the work that you do hi Pamela booer struther District 3 Board of Education member and um Vice chair of the audit committee Mia Barton Board office staff member okay I am Janice Walters sea the acting internal audit director pleased to be here thank you all so much for joining this evening Miss Barton could you please call the role Dr anderl present Miss booer Str present Mrs Brown pres Mr Jackson Mr jongo we have three present thank you a quorum is present we will now proceed to our semiannual internal audit report as there are no public comments registered I'd
003like to recognize Miss Janice Walter simple the acting internal audit director for the semiannual internal audit report for school year 25 presentation okay thank you so much chair andell I am again Janice Walter simple I'm the acting internal audit director and I'm here to present to you a semiannual report of the internal audit activities starting July 1 through December 31 2024 Miss simple I'm sorry I apologize for um cutting you off and you may um do this but would you mind just for the public just providing a little bit of in additional context um I know you're going to provide a little bit of information here about your responsibility but for those who may not be aware of um you know the purpose of this report amongst other reports that you may be over as
004well can you probably provide a little bit of context for those who may be unaware okay um I'll be glad to share so this department um I guess I'll capture all of that in this internal audit is um this department was created by the board um over 25 years ago and the um primary responsibility of the internal audit department is to I think not not be so much of an oversight but to be um the eyes and ears of the Board of Education in that we review the activities the financial activities and operational activities of the Departments within Prince jorg's County Public Schools and the schools themselves and based on our review which is more or less risk driven we review these activities and report back to the board sharing the results of our review
005and um in the process management is responsible given the prescribed timeline to respond to the findings that we' we may identify and um the recommendations that we' have made to them and we are also responsible to share that information with the board so as an internal audit Department our board policy 8373 internal board operations office of internal audit uh which was adopted in June of 2015 um provides us with a mandate in terms of what we are allowed to do in terms of our access to documentation and um Personnel within the Realms of our audit and how you know the autonomy of this department is established there included in that that um body of information that guides our operation is a reporting responsibility and this department is required to provide quarterly reports to the board
006we're also required to provide monthly reports um for this year we have not provided the first quarter report and that is why we have a semiannual report that we're going to share and this is to share with the audit committee which is that subc commmittee of the Board of Education that's has been established at the beginning of this year to more or less oversee the internal audit or to provide guidance and where we are required to report directly back to the audit committee so um I guess that's our responsibility in if I should try to paint it with a broad brush okay um so would you kindly advise a slide Advance a slide for me yes I'm trying I'm trying that's okay now I went back too far oh there it goes there there we
007go just hit enter me all right our as we go forward um inter the internal audit office responsibilities so as our name implies we are responsible for audits for planning um executing and Reporting the results of our Audits and like I said before we perform school activity fund Audits and that's where we review the financial activity of the schools um schools re receive various funds um from students um for various activities and we review to ensure that those funds that are received and funds that are disbursed as it relates to school activities that they're administered in accordance with the accounting procedures manual and that's the quote unquote Bible or the guidelines that um dictate how School funds should be used um schools also receive um SBB school-based budgeting funds and those are funds that are
008alloc allocated by the um budget office we do not review those funds we just review the funds that are flowing in and out based on receipts from um students uh we also perform operational Audits and this is where we perform audits of processes within um various departments included in operational audits are also Information Technology Audits and more recently we have started conducting audits um that we are calling continuous Audits and these we referring to um because they're more real time in terms of we're providing management with you know constant feedback usually an audit is a reflection of something that happened in the past period but with our continuous audit we providing more realtime um responses and recommendations to management for process improvements and these have been welcomed by management and um we're hoping that we
009can add some more value here it's not as extensive as an operational audit but it's providing the information as to here is where we're finding deficiencies here is where you can make the process stronger in terms of the internal controls so that we can um avoid you know when when the future audit comes the real audit then we can reduce the issues or the exceptions that would be identified we also perform investigations and this is a significant um part of what we do as internal audits we have an investigative auditor who is responsible for managing our hotline and the hotline is navx um and navx captures all of our activities as they relate to um complaints that we receive anonymously or otherwise and um we may also we it's it's our big repository and um
010we may receive complaints outside of our hotline system we still enter them in there because we want to centralize all the complaints that we receive and process so that's one of the for investigations that's where the bulk well not the bulk but maybe about a third of our activities are tied up in investigations and then we may have special requests either for investigations or for other Audits and um we also incorporate those into our audit plan and execute the audits or the investigation as we see necessary the next um we have our our other responsibilities in addition to what we do we have other functions and as a department we have a one position for a business analyst and that business analyst assists with supporting board members by processing their expenditures reviewing and um processing
011expenditures um we also we're also responsible for coordinating activities surrounding our external Audits and that's where we coordinate and communicate back to the board the status of our operational our um external audit sorry and that's with our external audit firm and that's for our annual comprehensive financial report and our single audit reports then we are also involved in communicating with the persons responsible for and the Auditors for external audits so there are msde audits for Student Records that we assist with um coordinating and the office of legislative Auditors so those are two of the main ones that we work along with and again share information with the board so that they can see um have an idea as to what is going on and then the big part is the administering of the um administration
012of the hotline I'm hitting enter and nothing's happening oh great okay for for the period our accomplishments for the period I guess the period is C off um we have completed 32 audits to date and uh to date being December 31 we have since completed a few others there are 32 as of 1231 um include 21 school activity fund audits four operational Audits and seven investigations and this will'll touch on in a little more um detail not too detail but we'll have a summary of these as we advance our slides for the 25 um fiscal year audit plan we are approximately 20% complete and um this is so because um even though we're halfway through the year we had some audits that were um some operational audits that were not necessarily um compet have been
013started but for some reason we could not get through them they have been um impacted by vacancies in our department um we have also experienced the impact of new auditors we had two new Auditors at the beginning of the fiscal year and they were experiencing a learning curve and then we also had the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks and those have impacted um our ability to get our get further along in our um audit plan um Staffing our department as was reported our department um has the capacity for um or has is designed for 12 FTE at this point we have three vacancies and um like I previously stated that has impacted our work um our work performance and then the hotline Administration we have received um the processed approximately 268 hotline comp complaints um for
014the first half of the fiscal year okay the operational audits that were completed I'm going to share a little bit more here I'm going to let you know the process that we've audited um the issue date the findings and when the action plans were due but before I go to that I want to say that all of the action plans were received so I would not continue and stating the action plan date because um we've we've received all of them and the management responses were accepted the first audit was an audit of the fuel management system that is called EJ Ward and this audit report was issued on July 5 2024 and there were two findings that we identified during that process the first being the um Department of Transportation and Central Garage does not
015have a systemic monitoring control in place that would reduce theft of fuel and the second is that the a report a usage fuel usage report that would ass assist Management in carefully monitoring any anomalies was not um it's available in the system but it has not been utilized by management so um we made the recommendation that management should use this report in order to assist them in improving the quality of the process as it relates to the fuel management then we did an a regular operational audit and this was of the HR certification process and in during this audit we did experience a scope limitation and that's what our first finding is alluding to where we were not able to get access to the system um teach and teaches where the certificates for um teachers
016or hous or pgca employees um their certificates are housed in the teach and um Eis is also another system that we had that we transitioned from before we used teach and we were not able to get access so as a result there were certain um assertions that we could not opine on administration of personnel records was also um another issues where issue sorry where we were not able to access the records in order to um in order to be able to determine whether the certification process operated as intended and there were also um Personnel action sheets where um within employees personnel file that were unavailable the next finding um the next audit was grade change validity grade change validity audit is an audit that is required by the state of Maryland it's an annual audit
017um I think this is the third this was the second or third year that we were required to do this audit and um it's where it's a state requirement that this audit is conducted so at the beginning of each school year we we tried to gather the information for the past year and um determine whether we review the when we review the system to see whether the changes grade changes were performed as um they're required to be performed and um we used school max but School Max has since or it has since transitioned to Synergy so the new system that we will be looking at during this year or at the end of this year early next fiscal year would be Synergy and here we found we had six exceptions where there were insufficient documentation
018of great changes uh where great CH changes were not updated in school Maxx where un there were unrecorded grade manager and transcript manager actions in school Max and they were delinquent process in of gr change requests inadequate staff training for GR changes and appeal and um the last exception here was the administration of grade change reconciliation we found that the reconciliation as required by the um administrative procedure which is founded in the state of Maryland regulation was not performed and then the last operational audit that we completed during the first um half of the fiscal year was for business continuity plan followup and this was also an it um audit and here we found there was one issue and this issue was that a formal risk assessment as required by proper business business practice was
019not performed following a Cyber attack that we experienced um well we're saying it was not performed in that it was not document it was required to be documented in the business continent plan that was prepared and we did not see it documented within the plan and then we it resulted in the finding management did not agree with this they um contended that they have performed um a risk assessment um however that risk assessment was not included in the audit plan and I guess that that was the finding that we had there so um they stated that there has been a risk assessment performed however there was no evidence that that um was performed because for the auditor we need to see it for it to exist next okay we had as stated before seven investigations
020so the first one was an investigation into misuse of sick leave um by an employee at the highville um Elementary School this allegation was substantiated and um it was referred to elro employee and Labor Relations office for review and to determine any appropriate actions so for our investigations especially if it has something to do with um some kind of misconduct on behalf of an um or by an employee internal audit does not recommend what should be done you re because that is the function of the employee and relations uh labor and relations office we often would make a recommendation for employee and Labor Relations to take the appropriate action the next um investigation was for cmit Academy North High School and this is a Public Charter School and there was an allegation that imalent payments
021were made for a newspaper club and policies and procedures regarding the emolument process was not followed um based on the investigation that was conducted by this office we did not um substantiate that allegation so we found that the allegation was unsubstantiated and when there is the allegation is unsubstantiated we do not make a um any we draw a conclusion that there is nothing for and management is not required to respond in this case um the next was Dr Henry wise Junior High School where the allegation was um a teacher was involved in fraudulent employment email scheme and um based on the investigation again in this situation we could not substantiate this claim the fourth instance was non-traditional North Campus where there was an allegation that uh well there were two allegations one that employee the
022employee received pay for seven days with a total of 7 hours of overtime and the second allegation was that employee falsify the principal's signature to receive overtime pay so in this case we could not substantiate that the employee received um 7 Days pay with a total of um 11 hours or 11 hours within seven days we could not substantiate that aspect of it however we were able to substantiate that the employee did falsify the principal's um signature to receive overtime pay and I remember this situation where the employee just you know made a copy of the time sheet with the principal's signature and used the white out and you know made the updates to this um form because the employee did not want to go and quote unquote interrupt the principal in order to have
023the principal always sign I think that in this case the employee was not aware of process but since it was falsification of signature which is forgery and fraudulent we did recommend this um situation for appropriate action by elro and um we also required or recomend recommended that um there should be some enhancement to the time approval process next okay perrywood perrywood Elementary School um undocumented leave case there there were two allegations here one the first one undocumented leave for teacher was substantiated the second under doent leave not recorded by secretary or timekeeper was partially substantiated and based on the key determinations and the conclusions of this investigation it was determined that three C days were not documented and or recorded by the school secretary then the next um investigation was for security equipment purchase and
024this was where um we had a situation where security cameras were shipped to us by the vendor based on a price quote that was signed by an employee for this significant amount the um of of cash um the security cameras after the issue was noted and it was noted that this process did not go through procurement as required uh um there has been several you know actions taken and uh the security cameras were since tipped back to the vendor without any consequence the Prince George's County Public Schools and the employee was um recommended for appropriate action by El and the final case is for Charles flowers High School EVP this was the last um hotline complaint that was processed the allegation was that an anonymous caller alleged that staff member a sent out an email
025to students who were not able to graduate the caller further noted that students have not taken part a before taking part B of some courses um based on the um review that we did and the investigation with the um ID's office the principal's office and all parties involved we could not substantiate this claim and no recommendation was made as a result next okay for our school activ it funds audit completed those were 21 audits some had no findings some had very little findings and some had a few more findings and this we attempted to depict graphically so would you advise please me okay so we can see most of the schools like a significant portion or seven seven out of the 21 so that's a third of the schools had five or more findings four
026schools had no findings um one school four schools also had one to two findings and six schools had three to four findings I think included in the three in the five to seven findings was one school that subsequently closed so um we did not need to have any of the um a response from that school but all the other schools have responded appropriately then for our hotlines we had all of the um hotline complaints that were submitted for the period the 268 and those we have also attempted to depict graphically so we have a bar chart for that on the next slide okay so we have here where the most significant ones um in terms of my primary issue safety issues and sanitation we had 29 complaints for the period bullying and harassment we had
02728 complaints school and office management there were 26 complaints employee relations 24 policy issues we had 25 and parent and community relations we had 19 so I think those were the ones that stood out the most and um when we projected them using the graph I think they're it show us which categories were most significant in terms of um the issues for the period next okay so like I said we started quite a few of these audits um prior to the third quarter and um we were not able to com well prior to the second quarter we were not able to complete all of them or some of them in the second quarter so far we have completed two of these audits um the second Factor it audit and the Tork policy so these were
028subsequently completed the I teacher audit is almost completed we had the exit conference and we're trying to resolve some discrepancies based on what we have identified and subsequent information that was provided by management for the itinerant teacher otherwise we have the special education audit that is in the fieldwork stage we have treasury operations that's another follow-up audit that and these are operational audits that are in the um that is sorry in the pre-planning phase we have Zone our systems that is in the Final Phase of field workor um and then we have the continuous audits where we are currently reviewing um and and analyzing Ing and assessing conflict of interest statements and leave request and approval then for our other General operational audits we are yet to begin our Capital Improvement program and our covid-19
029grants and other un audited Grant um Grant funds so these two are have not begun but we're hoping we may not get to complete them in this quarter but we're hoping that we can significantly complete those otherwise the rest of the rest of the audits we do anticipate completing them in the third quarter and that has been our um the activities for our the first half of our fiscal year at this point I all to say thank you for your attention and welcome your comments at this time thank you thank you Mia thank you so much my Miss Walter simple and to Echo what was shared at the top of the meeting thank you so much for all of your work um I think this certainly shows um that you and your team have been
030extremely busy um and we appreciate um all the work that you've done for for our school system um at this point I would love to now open the floor for any discussion board member Brown yeah I just had um a quick question um regarding the integrity and compliance I know that's not your office have you all spoken to them as far as what they'll be doing as as far as even assisting you all um because this is a legislative position that they do hold so I am am asking from the from the position of is there a way they could take some of that so you guys won't be as overwhelmed and I know that there's a staffing shortage but what does that partnership essentially look like thank you as far as I know we
031do not have a partnership with that office their role is independent of ours so we do not work we our we're more parallel than we're adjacent in terms of what we do thank you board member boo Str yeah thank you so much I just um wanted to thank Miss Walter simple um you know you've been doing a lot in your acting role and bridging bridging us to our new internal audit director who will begin soon and and I know will certainly be significant in the um getting through this period where it feels like there there's more work than the um FTE so um just definitely want to thank you for for all that you've done to keep us steady I did just want to note for the those the folks watching the meeting or the
032video that the entire board does see all of this data and I think B member Bo Str may be frozen is she Frozen for anyone else you do the public M I just wanted to add just a little more context to that board member am you are now so we missed um most of that I think what the last thing that we heard was um just wanted to let the public know that the board sees all of this reporting that's the last thing we heard my apologies for the bad connection no would you like to repeat what you shared I will try but signal to me if it's not working um oh I just noting the thanking Miss Walter simple uh for her diligent work in the acting of internal audit after you know we
033did have a director who served for qu quite very long time um you know who of course was able to uh um assist her her staff and and all the roles and um and so that person will be starting soon my second thing that I said was about how the entire board in our closed session sees all this St data in a very timely Consolidated here to the public so I just wanted to assure everyone who you know you know watches these reports that that there isn't that big gap in time between our knowledge of what internal audit is working on and and to the point of a report so those are just two two things but mostly to extend a public thanks here to miss Walter simple thank you thank you board member Bure
034and I I will add to that if I can just to say that um this is of course the um this is a um semiannual internal report and so um what we will begin to do is establish um a Cadence for when um these reports are shared um in this space um for the public um but to board member P sh's um point the board does um see on see reporting on an ongoing basis and in a timely um matter but for the purpose of this space we will bring them um in this way any other board members have any questions if not um I have a question so um the the follow-up audits um that you mentioned um so the special education audit um can you speak to I guess kind of what what
035the ongoing audit is or what the follow-up audit actually will entail and what is it a follow up from can you kind of speak to the like the timeline of that do you have that information Miss water simple um sure I I have some I can speak off the top of my head for some of the information so in 200 I think 23 we initially performed an audit of the um special education program where we were looking at okay so first disclaimer internal audit does not have the expertise to go in depth in terms of auditing the special education program however the level of audit that work that we did was to ensure okay the student was supposed to have received an two IEPs for the period um did they get that inform did they
036get that service that they were supposed to have receive and so there are certain Pro progress reports that are required to be completed and they're they're all electronic so we can go in let's say progress reports this is not correct but um or it may not be correct let's say quarterly progress reports or monthly progress progress reports are required for special education students um so we will go in and we look to see okay there was one for April one for May one for June one for July and that's the level of work that we would do um so just to on a high level to see our students receiving the service that they should be receiving and we did that initial audit and we found some exceptions there and because this is a very
037sensitive area we've decided that we're going to uh and based on Management's response to remedy those um exceptions that were identified we went back and we selected you know we went back to see did they create let's say they were going to make a policy for something to fix an issue that was identified then management create that policy that's what we're going to do in the followup and um we are also doing another limited sample where we um we're checking to make sure that the issues that we identified previously do not necessarily still exist and if they do we're going to report that so the followup is usually making sure that management implemented as recommended and as agreed upon in their prior action plan and then we normally do a limited scope audit of the
038current activity to ensure that okay it's working as outlined the controls that is thank you you're welome are there any other questions if not I have one more but I don't want to ha the time okay um so for the upcoming audits that you mentioned the operational audits so the capital Improvement program and the covid-19 grants and other unaudited grants um I believe you said that you you may or may not get to these um this quarter but the others will be completed is that correct correct okay so for the capital Improvement program I know that we had um CIP come to visit um in a few a few months ago um where they were just talking about the program more broadly and um the timeline um what I guess just even if it's an
039overview like what is the what is the plan for for that particular operational audit when you you do begin so um again this is an area where internal audit our our pool of Auditors we do not have extensive um Capital Improvement program um calls um so what we're doing what I guess and this is based on a previous discussion that we have had with um some interested parties is that we're going to review the process we want to there are certain areas we want to make sure that funds that are administered are being spent as intended let's say they funds that were um allocated for certain Capital Improvement Pro projects that those funds um were are being used efficiently and that we're not re returning funds to the um to the source of those funds
040um we want to make sure that um project managers are you know going out timely they're approving those invoices and the Billings for payments um we may look at a few Awards to see how the the competitive bidding process for those Awards to see whether um you know management is you know following the RFP process in order to um bid these jobs so those are some of the areas where we're going to look at the controls that are built in are they effective as design and So based on those um controls we're going to test the effectiveness of those um controls to see are they working um we might not be able to go and say oh well this project B this project is you know the design is right whatever the layout we I
041mean we don't have those types of expertise but what we do know is that we're going to review what the process what that management has designed and we're going to ensure that management is effectively discharging their responsibility as it relates to um the designed processes when we test to see how effective they are thank you thank you Miss are there any other questions from board okay um well since there is oh was there somebody no okay sorry I had thought I heard something well since there is no um further discussion um we will move forward um one thing to noce that any follow-ups um from tonight's meeting um will be shared upon receipt um again want to thank you so much Miss Walter simple for taking the time to come and share this information um
042with the committee and with the public there being no further business the time is now 5:57 sorry 6:57 p.m. and the March 3rd 2025 board audit committee meeting is adjourned have a good evening everyone thank you good evening Dr and and thank you all thank you