The Delaware State Auditor’s Office recently released performance audits of Delaware school districts for the fiscal year 2024.
Of the 19 school districts, six had no findings whatsoever. They were the Delmar, Lake Forest, Laurel, Milford, New Castle County VoTech and Polytech School Districts.
While the rest of the districts did have findings, the State Auditor’s Office makes it clear the performance audits did not uncover fraud, waste or abuse.
Common findings include purchases not following state procurement laws, districts not maintaining support for employee payroll changes and payroll policies not requiring appropriate review and approval of payroll changes.
Samuel Barry is director of policy and communications for the Delaware State Auditor’s Office. He says some issues were already known - like the one in the Appoquinimink School District.
"Appoquinimink has a finding because they didn't have enough money in reserve to pay payroll for I think it's an extra month, which is something that, you know, our office talked about last year in a special report on Appoquinimink. So they have that finding," said Barry.
Barry notes findings in other districts include paying too much over a certain period of time to a vendor, and one district not providing supporting documentation for pay change approvals.
He adds with consistent yearly audits now being done as required, the hope is some issues in these districts will be cleared up in the future.
Barry explains why some of the issues are there.
"So there's differences among the school districts, and I think there's a lack of standardization of practice that is contributing to some of this,” said Barry. “And I also think maybe a bit of a lack of feedback. When Auditor York took office back in 2023, we were years and years and years behind on these audits of school districts that the State Auditor was supposed to be doing every single year."
Barry notes the hope is to be caught up on school district audits either later this year or next year.
The audits can be found on the State Auditor’s website.
