001Good evening. It's Tuesday, January 6, 2026. Welcome to the work session of the board of education for the East Rockway Union School District. I'm going to call to order at 6:09 p.m. and we're going to stand for the pledge of >> allegiance [clears throat] to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So, now we're going to have an internal audit presentation by Rich. >> Welcome. >> Good evening. >> Happy New Year. >> Yeah. See you guys again. >> Yeah. So, I can get >> That's great. >> That's fine. Yeah. How do you even uh Richard Coffee, director of internal orders with Colin Benowski with me here is partner Chen Da as well. Uh so just
002kind of quick background into the internal order function districts have uh with the internal order function. We have two types of engagement here that we conduct. One is an annual risk assessment update involving interviews and meetings with various administrators and key employees in the district. uh during that engagement kind of talk about key changes from the previous year we're in performing our previous risk assessment changes in staff any changes in procedures processes any new laws or regulations have met come into play I know quite busy over the last couple years with some legislation uh kind of passed down from the state certain scenarios uh if some of them involving board policies I'll also talk about uh and follow up on prior risk assessment report recommendation that are open as well as following up on a
003previous detailed testing report detailed testing engagements and reports that's where we get more involved in terms of actually digging deeper into an area performing selections as as the says performance some testing detail the activities uh so when we meet the audit committee after our risk assessments we met last year in February both to two reports at that point in time which would be always an an annual update on a risk assessment as well as what area for detailed testing uh so last Here we determine and make a decision also at the meeting which we do this evening is what area find kind of the best value ad for us to perform a review in terms of a detailed testing area or areas for engagement. So last year we determined let's take a look at your
004special education area particularly financial operations special education uh and it included grants as well given a component of your special operations grants. Um what we did was grants we covered in addition to your grants related to special education which your 616 IDA grants we also covered your uh ESSA grants which are your title grants which are maintained and managed by another section within the district. We also cover that as part of an overall review of grants and grants activities. So what we've done is as we always do with our reports reports, draft reports be through with administration, go through the details, ensure accuracy, completeness also talk about the feasible reasonleness of the recommendations to enhance either processes and procedures or [laughter] if applicable where it might be a compliance scenario. go through that and then
005we'll be issued and and set out hopefully an opportunity to look through the reports. The uh final draft we leave it as a draft version for tonight because there are any other edits. So changes need to be made and then the process would be then the audit committee recommends that the board accept the reports and then at that point districts have 30 days of the board accepting of our reports to u put together and submit a board approved corrective action plan and that's something that's kind of pretty much a cycle works each year. Okay. So first report I'd like to go through is the um special education finance operations grant administration. That's the detailed testing. That was the engagement we performed initially. That's a background information here. A little talking about basically some standards. Scope
006period. Scope period you know January one from March 31st. That's the time period when we do our sample selections with transactions and activities. That's the kind of the period that we do for selecting such uh transactions for review and testing. Information about county standards and such. format. It's a background section uh which talks about some key information related to the department in terms of staffing. We've had some changes you know within the department over this last couple years with administration and roles and duties. We've had some changes there as well and also giving a little information related to special ed one of the areas that we decide to collect because it's sizable component of your budget right it's got a sizable amount of dollar associated with over $6 million now I'm looking at 24.5 uh
007in terms of the annual cost to the budget for the special education area also talk about tracking and monitoring of students information here right students with the individual education plan again there's cost associated with in terms of providers that you're assigning. So we look at and monitor some of those and then you have high cost a district receive some high cost aid that's driven by calculations that the state comes up with and each district has its own particular amount in terms of thresholds. There's a core threshold that comes into play. Uh basically it's dollar amount spent on an individual student exceeding those thresholds. district is uh is able to file and submit some high cost aid based again on a threshold on what they ratio and what the percentage is on dollar amount. So you
008want to see that you're managing and monitoring those those students for possibilities of getting some a if they were to exceed those thresholds. So that's some of the information that's in your background section as well. And then once we determine the area the procedures on page four that's from the engagement. So we've been sticking with determine which areas we're going to be performing a review go through and we basically procedures usually entail review what policies practices protocols related to the respective area and then whatever testing that we do looking at budget budget activity there budgets then processes procedures related to expenditures payments purchases um also billings if you have activities between or either to or from other districts where students may participate in some programs within your district or we may be sending some student
009to this other district. So we look at and monitor and see if there's any activities there and then again you get into cost payments show the accuracy of those those dollar amounts whether it be payments to districts or payments uh coming in receipts from districts and then looking at also there's system it's a system program that's used for uh managing monitoring activities related to the IEPs and the services provided to students so there's a system there. So we look at access whenever we're thinking about um employees access to database systems we want to look to see are there good controls over managing monitoring those ensuring that in addition to user accounts being active or inactive there's also permissions they might have different levels of permissions that are allowed right so ensure that that's accurate and
010and there's good management and oversight related to those activities so then findings your findings starting on page four uh it relates do is find informationational related to board policies, protocols, practices, information or good business practices. They have to be identified finding where there might be an opportunity for improvement or enhancements will have a corresponding recommendation and so you know the number of policies obviously covering it and uh providing some oversight related to your special education activities and students and such right. Uh then comparison of budgets we put in here as a review for for the readers of the reports page five you just see kind of the trends of what's happening in terms of the dollar amount. So it's a it's an area that has a sizable amount of uh budget budget and expenditures as
011well as you'll see it's you know increasing as a constant rolling with districts. We have about 30 clients right in the world all kind of you know um seeing increases in both either additional services and of course related to the students in those areas and then some more you know other findings information related to our exception of uh testing and reviews of gears and invoices well and then uh looking at the system as I mentioned seven looking at user accounts uh as well and you have uh you know various individuals within the systems who want to look at those activities. I use 245 active users and you know yours are in addition to your employees. You may have some third party providers may have access which is appropriate but have to put some notes and
012information related to the system. So you just want to see that what the procedures are related to those activities. Uh and then recommendations uh written in formal procedures. I just can kind of continue developing those covering key processes very extremely helpful in terms of transition and turnover and changes with with staff uh and employees, right? So you have something you work with and it facilitates that turnover transition and the kind of onboarding and learning curves with employees in a position. uh reconciliation system user accounts no strength procedures related to the frontline system by maintaining documentation of the annual reconciliation of user accounts. So there's a process they would go through. Uh there was no formal documentation maintained. Anytime there's a good system or process that's completed, it's always recommended that you have a formal license
013by having documentation or records showing that you perform such a you know such a benefit task and then timely payments of the districts here just with efforts to ensure payments of the districts relates to tuition process. Those are recommendations related to the special education part with you and we did separately the grants administration. We did since we covered both the [clears throat] EDA and the title grants related to your grants, grants activities, right? Processes and procedures submitting grants who ensures that the grant expenditures are compliant and allowable per the guidelines to the respective grants. So each of the grants has its own kind of uh convenience scenario in terms of what's allowed on what are allowable cost rights want to ensure that the process there are process in place to ensure that you follow grant
014guidelines information right to get the section 611 uh and that's the title one those are the larger of the grants within each of those categories and procedures there again just to review interview individuals that manage and oversee uh the grants and the grant activities and doing a selection testing of the activities as well then some findings some information related to such right so it's as you file a grant you have an application that gets in then you can request some funds during the year depending on the amount and the size of dollar amount of grants may be worthwhile consider submitting FS25 request for some funds during the year small dollar amounts generally you just file a final at the end those dollars so recommendations here and also a requirement to is have uh Personnel activity
015reports are also something that's required. It's called a PAR form. Basically, what that is is some uh subtitle grants and um as well as the uh special grants allow cost expenditures related to their old employees. Just want to inform employees need to sign a form of testing that they're aware that they're part of or their full salary is charged to such a grant and they're obviously involved in grant type of activities. make an allowable cost. the FS25 form as I mentioned writing request for funds considering process be able to periodically submit requests for funds and then also you know continue with the written forming those key tasks performance they [clears throat] questions related to >> can I ask so you spoke very quickly I'm reading through it you said that there were three recommendations So,
016if you had to bullet point them without the whole I I saw something about um the frontline special the management system. >> Are we working on that? >> Are you done? Sorry. >> Okay. I just want to >> systems called IEP direct. >> Okay. >> So, everybody can get on it now and work it. It wasn't that people couldn't get on it. It's that there were some accounts that were even though we' taken access from specific parts of >> uh they remain used listed but they couldn't get in. >> Right. Had to remove them. >> There was that. What were the three major points? >> Front line. >> Yep. Procedures. >> Okay. Seven >> because we broke it into two pieces. Right. So we drove this kind of the scope of work and the detail
017testing into special education financial operations which is the first section. >> Yep. And I read that and understand that I'm good. >> Yep. So page seven is three recommendations. >> Okay. >> And then the grants review the second part of the report. >> That's fine. The grants fine. >> Four. >> I'm good. >> Question. >> Thank you very uh risk assessment update report here. um as I mentioned information here and the formats of the reports are similar to formats in the previous year. He's got some introduction [clears throat] related to the uh draft the risk assessment report as I mentioned I follow up on recommendations from the previous risk assessment report which was issued February 4th 2025 is when we met last year and the detailed testing that night we reviewed the report was related
018to purchasing and dispersement. So those recommendations from that report also issue eight was February 4th. We follow up on those recommendations and included them in this in this report here talks a little about the corrective action plan as I mentioned on page three we reference that and then page four and five is the table that we have tracks the if you look the day of detail testing uh basically that's the date where we performed of that specific area or areas and then the date of the report and then kind of control risks the control risk there moderate testing uh would be high if we found there were you know no control in place [snorts] but generally would be moderate. We do some testing of the area to ensure that our understanding of the internal controls
019and processes related to that area. Uh actually, you know, in place and designed to basically mitigate any potential errors, mistakes. And then after doing testing and clearing out any recommendations, they move from a moderate to a low. And then we've also done if it's been a number of years since we've issued a detailed test report of an area just because of the passage of time we moved from a low to a moderate haven't tested it in a while. So you'll see on page four, right? So review uh of the cash and investment management bank reconciliations in 2018 and that was a number of years ago, seven years ago was eight years ago had from that pass and the status of the other items grant special ed. I'll put the dates in for tonight's meeting and
020finalize it after this evening. And then we'll do is also come back to this chart uh and table that we can do as reference when thinking about the detailed testing for the next area. Moving on forward, one of the things we've added to our risk assessments a few years ago are key changes given as I mentioned it's pretty much a key component of our risk to all the administrators what changes have taken place for our year. You can see a number of items in here as board members be aware of a number of these ter policy updates and obviously been very active and busy official board member right some of personnel changes that have taken place well some different laws so those are all 80 degree temperature as you can see right build self a
021lot of there's numerous number of things place also some financial information related to your financials which your financial auditor, external auditor goes through those as part of the financials each year had information in there as well. Uh Gazby 101 was another Gazsby and keeping business officers accounting for firms quite busy. Uh but they changed new account stands that have been added and then other you know information is by area that's how we kind of set set it up. Uh the risk assessment table was kind of like an index and so we go by area there as well. universal free school meals. Whereas another change has been various changes in the food service area over since COVID information there as well information technology. Then we get to the recommendations on page nine. Uh couple recommendations related
022to human resources your employee offboarding developing procedures during the offboarding process as a part of the separation process with employees. You're requiring that they return their physical ID badges in addition to deactivation. Right. uh extra classroom couple recommendations there. Verification of individual club records and so part of the extra classroom process is good for the uh students to learn a little bit business acumen which includes booking and part of the advisors of the clubs to be working with the students to ensure that they keep their own records in addition to your sexual treasure records. kind of works as a good check and balance. Again, also gives them some uh financials skills, bookkeeping skills and review of inactive clubs. And then there just periodically take a look and review your inactive clubs. They plan on continuing
023going forward or not. Just basically as part of your financial uh extra classroom activity fund, but that's issued to help keep that fun uh as well. And then some open recommendations the district's working on, you know, so we'll follow up with these and new recommendations for next year's risk assessment, you know, payroll payroll audits. So we're working on in the district a even since we've, you know, performed the the review here a little bit earlier this fiscal year, some of these things may been closed out or close to being closed out, which I expect to close out assessment. [clears throat] And then a number of closed items that the district has addressed and close out starting on page 12 through the end of the report. Several items there including a number of the ones that
024followed up on related to purchasing issue any question related to finding the next. Okay. So we want to go back to page four and five please. There's the uh the risk assessment table. So here as I mentioned perform review of an area if there's you know associated date of detail testing it also shows when uh review was performed for the year kind of use this look through and do it's hard to identify maybe key areas where there have where there hasn't been a detailed testing review that might look to see you know value might be in one of those areas and then the next is to look at in the area we might not have reviewed in a number reviewers. So, kind of given those scenarios there, right? Like just look through and seeing some
025areas where we perform some detailed testing with other school districts clients and page five. There's a few areas here on capital assets service and classroom as well as student related data uh and safety and security. Those are areas we've not performed here at this district. So that's something that you consider for this this perform a detailed review some of the things that we haven't performed review on page four towards the top of the page you generally have a lot of these things already clicked so I won't be a lot of value kind of a detailed test case governance and planning academy reporting you have your place your financials and stuff there's the tag everything's governance and planning budget development that pretty much said you have your your presentations that you do and schedule each year.
026So I think they are pretty much you know it's not until you get to maybe revenue and cash management which are revenue management billings cost and receipts depending on what kind of volume you might have district whether or not there's be a lot of value added that kind of an area as well. So um so those are kind of I guess the areas to to possibly consider. Fantastic. >> Thank you. Yeah. So something if you want to give that some thought circle back with me. Sounds like that probably might be better approach. >> Yeah, that works. >> Okay, that's fine. Perfect. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. Do you have any old business you would like to discuss? >> Yep. Two things. First, uh, addition the alignment staff meetings are coming up
027January 15th and January 28th this month. I'm anticipating after those meetings, I'll have more information to share with the public. Um, so at that point, um, once we start continuing to build our drafts, I will start informing the public. Um so after the 28th we're looking forward to having some more information and some more details. And the second thing is um there had been some uh a few recent requests on curriculum uh before the holiday. Uh Mr. Murray and Miss Schneider and the principles uh put together a K through6 curriculum that's posted up on the website. Um and I'm going to have actually ask Mr. Murray to just give a quick demonstration on where to find it on the website. So if any parents have any questions about the curriculum, about anything they need to
028know, please feel free to reach out to Mr. Murray or myself or, you know, you can start with the elementary principles, too. So Mr. Murray, I'm going to turn over to you. >> Sure. Thank you. So based on uh several requests from parents to just have a better insight into what their students were learning in the classrooms on a daily basis, uh particularly in terms of ELA, reading and writing. Uh I worked with Danielle Schneider, our literacy coach, Kristen Anis, our director of humanities, um Mr. Vix Horn and Miss Kelly, our principles, to put together a what we called an overview and curriculum guide. Um, our teachers have a very full detailed almost day-to-day guide that they use that would be too dense and and really um uh not necessarily accessible to parents who were
029not educators because it's written for teachers to be used in the classroom. Um, so we took all of that information and turned it into a document or set of documents that would be intentionally written to be accessible by anyone who has children in the school district. Um, so I just want to very briefly show you where you can find that information if you were so inclined to look at it and report. Um, and like Miss Bamaso said before, any questions, feel free to contact your child's teacher. uh it's always the best first person to go to. Uh you contact your child's principal. Uh I also am happy to talk to any parent who has any questions uh that they may have about um the curriculum and what is being taught and how it's being taught
030in the classroom. So, um, just very briefly, if you were to go to our homepage here across the top, you've got a menu. And if you click on departments, you'll see curriculum. And if you click on the curriculum homepage, just an introductory letter for me, but if you just scroll down a very short way down the page, you'll see uh right in the middle the elementary literacy curriculum. And then each of those documents here is clickable and it will pull up a uh PDF file of that document. So we started with this elementary literacy framework document. So this is really the uh overarching philosophy and approach to literacy education in the district K6. Um so this is a general document. It's not specific to any grade level, but it does talk about how we developed
031our curriculum, what we value in our curriculum, basically the four principles of a structured literacy approach. Um, and then very briefly, it also has a picture of a typical literacy day in the classroom, the block of instruction and what kinds of instruction goes on in the classroom. Um, and that would be similar pretty much K through six, that that approach to how the day is broken up. Um, but if you were to go back, let's say you were curious about your fourth graders specific curriculum, I can click on the fourth grade curriculum guidance document and then this goes into much more detail. You can see that this is a ninepage document as opposed to just a front and back. Um, and if you scroll through, and I'm not going to read it for you. You
032can certainly you know please go to the website and look but um it introduces the key standards of the year for that year. It talks about the specific approach to instruction in that year. We have instruction literacy approach use explicit systematic instruction. Um it's aligned with the science of reading. be over here connect to the um lifelong practices of readers and writers that come from the state education department along with the learning standards. Um a description here of how students really learn to read and that at the in this particular case in fourth grade they're moving away from figuring out how to say the word and really figuring out the meaning of the text as a whole. And that's a big shift in fourth grade for students. um some of the things that students will
033do in the classroom on a daily basis. Just a list of different activities they may have. Um it talks here about the six pillars of literacy instruction. The the six really most important things that students will learn um which includes phic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, uh oral language and all of that leads to comprehension. And it talks about how we teach each of those things. So for example in fourth grade our phonics work is moving to um the morphine level which is parts of words rather than individual letter sounds within a word. We're looking at parts of words like group words, suffixes, prefixes, how I can read a multi-elabic word because I can see the pieces within it and I know each of those pieces has a meaning and if I kind of put those
034meanings together, I understand what that word means even if I've never read it before. Um, so that's that's really valuable work that um we're doing in our upper grades. It mentions some of the different high quality instructional materials that we're using. Um, and then it shifts over to writing and our approach to writing in the classroom and how again that's that's a multi-skilled approach before you can become a truly proficient writer. Um, and then finally, something that we're really proud of that we put towards the end, um, we do discuss how we're assessing students on a daily basis. That was one of the questions parents have was, "How do I know my child's learning?" And how do you know my child's learning? So, we put information in there about some of the ways that we're
035assessing student learning. And then each grade document ends with a partnering with families segment. So that last segment of all of these documents talks about how families can work together with the teacher in the school to support their child's literacy learning. Um now one other thing that's not available on the website but that parents will start receiving beginning with the next shift to new units. Each unit will now have a letter home to the parents describing that specific unit's key learning elements and what's going to be going on in that classroom for the next few weeks. So, we're trying to be um you know, more transparent with families. We were never really trying to hide anything, but you know, you talk about like risk assessment like uh Mr. Coffee just talked about with us. We
036just didn't have procedures in place. So now we're putting procedures in place to very actively and transparently communicate with families on a regular basis what their student will be learning in the classroom over the next several weeks. We already have something like that in place for math. We've now added it for literacy. So that's something that we're really proud of. >> Can I ask a question? >> Please go ahead. >> So a unit lasts three or four weeks. >> It varies. So, so units could be as as few as three, as many as six depending on the on the richness of >> So, it's kind of like a progress report card. >> No, this wouldn't be a report card on what the student how the student has done. It'll be an introduction to what the
037students will be working. >> So, I'm just questioning. So, a teacher has 20 kids. Do they have to individualize? No. >> For each kid, it's one for the class. Okay. This is what we're doing for six weeks. Like for example, the next unit is writing argumentative message, >> okay? >> And kind of describing some of the things that will be going on in that argumentative message. So group message that just goes out to each parent. So parents should know, my child moved from this unit, now they're moving on to this unit. Exactly. Exactly. >> I think that was part of the request. Yes. that parents are asking. And I think what it'll do is it'll allow >> parents to have those conversations with teachers prior >> to having them assess or prior to the end
038of that argumentative essay. The parents can say, "Okay, what what can you help my child with?" And it'll give them an a springboard to talk about. >> And and the other thing that it will do is it'll help the parent talk to their child about what happened in in school today. We we you know for all of us who are parents what did you do at school today? >> Nothing. >> So you know these letters will help parents know the answer wasn't nothing. Well what about you know blah blah blah and and it can start those dinner table conversations and really help um foster the the the school uh home partnership. Is there um an outline that parents will get at the beginning of the year and say basically this is where we will be
039around this time frame or is it something that's going to come out as they're moving to the next group? So those letters will come out as they're moving to the next unit starting with the next set of units. We didn't do this in the fall but we're moving now from the winter forward doing it. Um, but there is a document that does have a timeline for the year and that can also be shared at the beginning of the year moving forward. So the teachers have that document and that's definitely something we can share with with families so they can know from the get-go, you know, come November we're going to be moving into this unit, right? Just so parents know my I know my child will struggle with this or I know my child will,
040you know, ex excel [clears throat] in this portion. So then this way parents have an idea of where their child is and what they have to focus on whether it's the whole entire thing or just portions of it I think might be beneficial. >> Yes. Yes. So those documents exist and again new better procedures those will be able to be shared >> and this is universal for the great >> K6. Great. And so the other place you can find it, so you know, I showed you originally um that you can find it on the curriculum homepage, but I know that most parents are a lot more likely to go to their child's school page first. So if I were to choose Center Avenue and if I were to go to the Center Avenue homepage and
041if I scroll down, um, right here, the ELA curriculum guides are also posted on each school's homepage. So they're easy to find. They're posted in multiple places on our website u for parents to very easily find >> and and the teachers I I'm just asking it to ask it. The answer should be yes. So the teachers for third grade two in center two in rain they all have the same curriculum and they all follow the same thing. >> They all have the same curriculum. So now remember just to be clear curriculum is what is learned. Teachers do have some flexibility with with materials they choose to make that learning happen. >> So we'll all students will all read perhaps the same novel over the course of the year but the specific ways that teachers get
042connected to that novel may vary from classroom to classroom. That's where their their kind of academic freedom and it gives the teachers the ability to have their passion in the room. But yes, students are all learning the same main uh ideas, contents and skills. >> Just wanted to ask you a free answer >> and and and um Mr. Doyle just that was not always the case. So, you know, if you were to ask that question 10 years ago, I might have to give you a different answer. Mhm. >> Um, but I can tell you that the answer today is whether you're in center or rain, whether you're in teacher A or teacher B, >> the curriculum is the same for each child. Um, there just may be some different flavors added as far as the
043resources that are used. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. >> And I want to say that we love we'd love to have parents if you have questions about curriculum, please feel free to reach out. We like sharing those those great details and um I want to thank Mr. Mari and the team and Kristen and the principles for really uh >> Thank you. >> It was a true team effort. There was no way one person was putting all of this together. >> Thank you very much. >> That's it for old business. So, uh, did you all review the minutes from the work session and special meeting 129 2025? >> Mhm. >> Any questions? >> No, no question. >> Um, >> did you review the minutes from the board meeting 12 the regular board meeting 1216, 2020?
044>> No questions. >> And did you do you have any questions on the next board agenda for January 13th? Not Motion to adjourn the work session. >> Motion second. >> 6:45. >> Is there a second? Move. >> Second. >> Okay. All in favor? >> It's official. [laughter] >> So, the meeting is ending at 6:45 p.m. >> Thank you.