2020-12-02 PPS School Board Audit Committee Meeting

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-12-02
Time 17:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing


Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Audit Committee Meeting 12/02/2020

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yourselves i'll start julia brown edwards um chair of the audit committee uh michelle de pass on the audit committee school board we've got member school board member on the audit committee jackson student rep to the audit committee parker myers student rep for the audit committee kate wilkinson public member audit committee great and i think um what i'll have is um staff who are participating when um we get to your agenda item if you'll just introduce yourself for the record that would be great and the first agenda item we have tonight is um nathaniel's here too oh hey nathaniel thanks for joining us and thank you director bailey um so the first agenda item we have today is an item the committee's going to review and then recommend to the full board for the um for the full boards consideration i think we just accept the board would accept the the audit and we have that scheduled uh for the next board meeting is that correct roseanne i'm looking at you i'm pretty sure that about the the kafir yeah yes but it's good for the 15th sorry um so we're going to start off by having a presentation uh from the um the external auditors that uh prepared this report and we have um a series of materials a link the audit for those who want to read it was that posted yes so we're going to start with just a overarching summary and then i'll ask um either um somebody from the staff team if they would like to have any remarks after the presentation and then we'll have any questions or discussions that may arise but tim do you want to take it from here for the record i am happy to take it from there thanks julia this is tim villapp i'm with talbot corvola and warwick usually referred to as just tkw we are the independent auditors for the district i'm also joined by jason romney you can see there as our audit manager who was well normally in a in a normal year he would be on site uh more frequently than me this year obviously neither of us is on site but nevertheless uh kudos to the the finance team for being able to get us everything we needed on a remote basis and putting together a nice kafir as as you said is it okay to call you julia should i say uh a pair chairperson or whatever it's fine that call me juliet's informal on the committee okay so it is it's a big document i will say i really like what the district did this year uh you've gone to four major funds you might remember there were i don't know a dozen non-major funds in prior years so it's been somewhat condensed which is uh i think is a good thing i think it makes the report a little easier to read cuts down a little bit on the number of pages we're down to what is it 140 or something or 130 instead of 170 so you know i encourage you all to read it you know word for word every single page as i know you all will um i i usually say there's only a very small part of this that is our part the auditor's part you know 99 of it is really you know your finance staff and and tracy and claire and everyone there has done a a very good job as our reports will show we do have a number of our reports and if we were going through this in order the the first thing you would come to is the independent auditors report i mean in terms of our reports first thing you'd come to uh if you got it as an attachment i think it just says iar for independent auditors report and it's uh three pages i'm old enough to remember back when we
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could do this in about a page but it now it takes three pages the good part is this is an unmodified opinion so the uh it goes through a lot of stuff about your responsibilities the management's responsibilities our responsibilities we do an audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards in the united states and in accordance with governmental auditing standards in the united states the good part of this thing comes up on the second page where we say in our opinion which is what you're paying us for the financial statements present fairly the financial position of the district in all material respects etc etc now we go through a few more paragraphs describing the degree of responsibility we take for other pieces of the kafir aside from the basic financial statements and there are several other pieces there's there's really two parts the required supplementary information there's some parts that we actually don't offer an opinion on and that's the md a management discussion and analysis and the some of the schedules on pension and opeb that are in the rsi there's also a bunch of uh sub uh budgetary comparison information in the rsi where we offer what's called an in relation to opinion we say that information is presented fairly when taken in relation to the basic financial statements themselves goes on then into other information the introductory and statistical sections we take no responsibility for although i will say as i say every year we do read them quite closely and then it talks about other governmental reporting that has to happen uh which we'll get into later when we talk about the single audit and also the reporting required by oregon minimum standards so the good part is it's a we used to call it a clean opinion now we call it an unmodified opinion it's just the kind you want to get from your auditor uh the wording is you know dictated by the american institute of cpas so there's not very much uh i can't take credit for how exciting it reads then you would get into well the md a follows the independent auditor's report management's discussion and analysis and i always encourage you all to read that people that don't want to read all 140 pages ought to read the md a because it gives a very good overview summary some background information also makes a comparison between current year and previous year which is not included in the basic financial statements so it's a great overview of the of the information that's in the cafe and the financial statements themselves i'll say it's uh somewhat good news this year in that nothing changed there's no new governmental accounting standards board pronouncement that changes the accounting for anything this year seems like that's the first year i've been able to say that in a while because it seems like things have been changing with some regularity but nothing new and different this year and i'm not going to spend any time at all really talking about the financial statements themselves unless somebody wants to i always always open to answer any questions or discuss anything but usually people would like to go through fairly quickly and i'm probably you're probably saying he's too slow too wordy already so i'll try to speed it up the uh actually if you were just flipping through the cafe i think the next thing you would come to is at the very back is our independent auditor's report in accordance with oregon minimum standards so it's in in the email it was just labeled i think iar oms the state requires us to look at a number of different things and they're bulleted in that in that letter it's a two-page letter we did find a couple of things that we have to report very small very minor we do a a test on the students and whether they were withdrawn on time we found one student in our in our sample of 60 that was withdrawn a few days late and then was re-enrolled when he came back to school so uh pretty small oh and then our test of 60 teachers and their experience there was one teacher at a charter school where the support for the experience couldn't be located again pretty small and i will say that's
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a that one is a tough one the teacher experience thing is always a challenge for everyone uh mr gillette may ask a question about those two items um i saw those two and i just had a question about follow-up um the incidence you know one divided by 60 it's like if that was a chemical that was in the water it would probably pass the test but um is there any follow-up needed does the district need to provide any follow-up for either of those instances or is this a matter of documentation not being available readily uh there's no required follow-up on that michelle it's just uh the district needs to be on their toes and try to minimize those instances in the future we've had those kinds of things in the district in the past uh some years more than others that this year i would call it a pretty small year it i mean there is a lot of work to maintain all of those things and i would say that this is pretty small this year some um is there a threshold though at which we would be concerned just out of curiosity i don't think it'll happen um there is not a bright line threshold that i'm aware of that would cause anyone to take any specific action that the district would need to respond to but of course there's you know it's it's there's a gray line probably if we were finding 30 students out of 60 or something then that would be an issue i'm sure but i don't know exactly where that line falls i don't think one out of 60 is anywhere close to the line though thank you did we have the same issue last year or was the year before uh i i think the teacher experience one happens almost every year although i think here it was more than one it was and i don't have it in front of me it was probably two or three um the teacher experience one almost happens every year the adm average daily membership testing uh do you recall jason if what what we had last year if there's anything there last year i i don't recall uh you know student attendance uh finding but i i yeah i would agree that it seems like every year we find at least one uh teacher experience um you know issue but it seems like every couple years where we have a student attendance uh issue that we report but again i think i think what the state is looking for is some kind of a pattern which you know one out of 60 i don't think is a pattern there was a an incident a few years back i don't there was a school district smaller school district i want to say south of salem that was over reporting their adm trying to get worried let's say it appears that they were trying to get a larger uh state school fund number and uh you know obviously that's not a good thing and that was investigated and appropriate action taken but but that's not the case here this is this is obviously just you know there there is so much data with when you've got this number of students and so many different people involved in reporting the attendance and so forth it's it's really hard to be 100.00 accurate on these things okay if there's no other questions on that i will move on to the single audit actually actually i just have one follow-up question um it's back to the back to the teacher experience um so while it sounds like it's immaterial and that we have it year over year i guess the question i would ask is is that the case for other districts um or are we an anomaly i don't think you're an anomaly i think it i mean you are the largest district in the state so it's you know you're dealing with more teachers and more students than anybody else so it's i don't think it's unusual to have a small number of errors again if it was a larger number and and we do see these errors at other districts um again because you're larger you're more subject to it probably okay i was gonna ask claire if if there was the occasional issue in beaverton which would be at least um certainly certainly this student
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enrollment um withdrawal date that that is a common um especially when even if you have um you know 50 000 students you also have kids that come and go so that even increases it to more kids right 55 000 whatever that come and go and just um uh things things do happen and you've also got a hundred different sites that are entering the data into our student information system so it has you know a lot of um circumstances involved in keeping you know 100 people plus 55 000 students all the records clean and also before before we move on to the next topic just want to ask whether um either of the two district internal auditors have any questions about the kafir hi everybody i'm janice hanson um the senior internal performance auditor for pps i don't have any questions about the kafir i did read over it specifically the mbna which i totally agree everybody should read um so thank you for that but in relationship to this question this topic that just kind of has come up i do wonder if it doesn't look like there's any recommendations in relationship to what the school district could do better to not have these instances of compliance for those two areas in the future i'm um i don't see any recommendations in relationship to it i i'm not sure if there are any thanks janice and uh no we did not make any specific recommendations on those as claire said i mean there are 50 000 students a hundred different sites it's really tough to get this stuff like i said a hundred percent without ever making an error and you know as as you're well aware the cost of implementing additional controls and checks shouldn't exceed the benefits that you expect to get from them so i'm we did not make any specific recommendations on this thank you i also want to note that uh just for the record tracy pinder put in the the chat um that in the 20 2019 kafir there was a comment that's what i thought on teacher experience but nothing on student enrollment any other committee members of this number have any questions before we move on to the next section please go ahead tim all right i just looks like michelle had her hand up but now it went away so okay the next thing to talk about would be the uh single audit so looks something like this one is a lot smaller report on requirements for federal awards or uniform guidance as most of you know the schools or the districts required to have a single audit because you receive you know more than enough federal money that you spend so the feds require us to do certain specific things and they are very specific on what it is we have to do how we select programs for audit what we what we look at when we do audit those there are two separate reports that we issue i mean it all gets bound into one thing but there's the first one that you would run across we just call it the gas report but it's the uh i don't know how it was labeled in the email but it probably says iar dash gas or something like that basically this is the one on internal control over financial reporting and it mostly has to deal with financial reporting issues as opposed to the next one which will be uniform guidance issues and compliance um and again this is it's an unmodified clean opinion if you will we didn't find anything to report it takes us a page and a half to say that but it's the it's the kind of report you want to get from your auditor and then to go along with that is the uniform guidance report probably called iar ug or something like that in the email if you got it as an email and this is report on specific compliance requirements for the different grants and
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you know we issue an opinion on each major program uh and internal control over compliance and also on the schedule of expenditures of federal awards sometimes called the sifa which is part of this package and again it's all a unmodified clean opinion nothing to report and for those of you who have been on the committee or around for a number of years you know that's a that is a good thing it it's been a few years actually the the district has been pretty clean for gosh three four years at at least if you went back to 2015 i think there were maybe half a dozen findings so things have have certainly improved um it's the way you want to be it's the way you want to keep it um i think it was 2017 the last year we had maybe five or six items yes i actually i i scanned back through the years briefly myself just curious because i i've been around long enough i remember some of these things and i actually i thought there were there were more in 17 but i think when i hit 17 there were only two or three and it was i think back even before that when there were five or six or seven so i'd say the team has done a very good job in recent years we also issue a schedule of findings and question costs it kind of summarizes what's on those other reports basically on one page it's really you probably can't read what i'm holding up or we say the the auditor's report is unmodified and there were no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies no non-compliance etc we identified the specific major programs that we audited give you the dollar threshold that where we distinguish between type a and type b programs which you probably don't care about unless you're really into federal requirements but again a a very good report and one y'all should be proud of great any other questions it's just really disappointing every year i hope that you know you find something salacious um you know roseanne driving around a sports car or claire's yacht or something like that but another boring year thank you so much for your work appreciate that and thanks to staff for running a tight ship so to speak yeah thank you director bail i'd specifically like to thank uh tracy pinder and claire gertz and the the full teams that uh put the work into this uh responding and working with the auditors and just your stewardship of our resources the first year yeah scott i i always say you don't want to have an exciting meeting with the auditor so uh i'm sorry i couldn't make it more exciting for you but probably you didn't really want me to anyway yeah i appreciate staff and the auditing team as well um you always want to audit that uh comes in under six pounds so it's great there's um nothing too salacious or it's great to have a clean um and boring audit yes it's good from our side too it the the clean audits and when the finance staff does a good job like they do here it makes our job a lot easier so we appreciate that so all the work that claire and tracy and cheryl who isn't in the meeting put into the cafe is very much appreciated from our side any other committee member comments or questions and then i'm going to turn things after that over to tracy or claire if you want to um sort of round off this agenda item any anything else from committee members uh claire tracy do you want to close close this out or do you have any comments that you want to make well i certainly do i'm so proud of our finance team um under senior director tracy pinder's um leadership and the improvements that have been made in the finance department continues to refine and improve their processes but third year in a row tracy i wish we were where we could go out and celebrate we usually as a team celebrate and this year we're struggling on how to figure out how to do that but um tracy please um take back to the whole
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team um the appreciation of um the school board the audit committee in the excellent work that has been completed and um keep up the good work we're so proud of a clean audit unmodified opinion there you go thank you great thanks all um i guess one just last thing i'd like to ask this is more of a go forward are there any um adjustments that are being made um or being recommended being made just because of the pandemic and the fact that most entities are operating in a virtual environment is there any sort of adjustments that are being made or is it just the same work that happen happening virtually not sure if you're directing that question to you i'm looking right now well i mean the the all the adjustments i think have been made since uh you know since the end of march so by now actually most things have happened and i would say that the district has done a really good job of uh transferring you know in-person you know physical processes to a remote environment like i said they were they were able to get us you know what we needed for the audit without any serious difficulty which is more than i can say for some of our clients and we do appreciate that i think most of the controls and processes may have changed slightly but they're still the controls are still in place the the approvals the reviews are all still happening uh they're just being documented you know online instead of some kind of manual signature or did something want to add anything no i i would just say that um yeah the audit went went very very smoothly uh given the circumstances and again i think the finance team did a really good job um you know with the remote environment um really there you know there was no hiccups and um you know as far as getting the information that we needed it um you know went very smoothly i think so great um well i want to thank um jason and tim for coming and presenting um today at the committee and also to the staff for the work you put into this um unless there's any objection um i'd like to recommend that have the committee recommend that the full board accept the um the audits um that we have received today is there any objection okay okay i'm i'm seeing head not firm affirmations so um that will go and again it's it's not an adoption or approval um so thank you very much uh next we're gonna move on to the um secretary of state's audit and um we have about 15 to 20 minutes set aside for this agenda item we received word from audit division from the secretary of state's office that they will be coming back to review the progress the district has made based on the 2019 audit that they conducted and i'm going to ask uh claire hertz to um present the information that you want to share with the committee this is a follow-on from the last committee meeting we had so in your packet is this is what was requested in our last meeting when we were talking about the secretary of state so it has nothing to do with the um current and notice that we received from the secretary of state but we can also speak to that as well if that's helpful um but you have a memo um there were what was requested is there were um items that were behind schedule and so we provided a memo and some documentation in three areas one is item number um 3c and investigating and reporting on potential savings and the level of bus services our transportation costs and so we are issuing a request for proposal a
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competitive procurement process for our home to school bus transportation and we have provided a draft of the request for proposal it's under final review right now and will be going out as well as a timeline for implementing or to implementing the changeover or you know the change of the current contract to the new contract and um it's an 18-month process to do so um when you've got 300 buses and bus drivers and so the secretary of state was interested in this looking at how to keep cost drivers down and in this area and particular were doing the contract we're proposing a different way of by modifying instead of having one site in northeast by having two sites one on the east side of the district and the other on the west side of the district we believe that will when you take um it will save resources in in two ways one is um when you look at having one location just to travel to the southwest to start a bus route is a half an hour into the end at the end of the day another half hour at least it you know could be even longer in in traffic time so there is um less hourly driver time and less mileage on um in terms of paying for the contract in by having two locations on opposite ends of the district and we also believe it the second reason for doing that is when we do the whole district at once there's only one company that's large enough to have the capacity to do the work so we're breaking it up into two chunks that would it opens us up to um we've identified i think six or seven companies that will be um you know soliciting proposals from and having that competitive um um contracting mode we would expect lower pricing when there's um more competitors in the process so um we wanted to share that while um we had hoped to have that done earlier it is on its way out and so happy to report that we um because um takes time to purchase 300 buses and time to um identify um pieces of land either they're going to purchase or lease to park 300 buses um it it's it's not something that you can just say okay in three months let's switch vendors it takes a long lead time okay so that was the first item um the the next one was i'd recommendation 16 um student conduct policy um that has gone to um the board policy committee and um there's also an impact the teachers union there could be an impact in the working conditions of teachers so it's something that needs to go into the bargaining process and so the policy work while there's draft um policy language it's on hold until we can bargain with teachers and due to the pandemic um bargaining was supposed to start last march and then um the regular bargaining sessions have been delayed because most of the bargaining that's been occurring is um regarding the pandemic and working conditions for staff and how do you support comprehensive distance learning how do you support hybrid learning those are the conversations that have been at hand for the health and safety of our students and staff so it's it's kind of in a holding pattern until um we get the bargaining completed and um so it is um in the works but that that is the reason for the delay um claire actually um when we report out to the secretary of state um i think it'd be important that actually the policy committee um over several months worked that and i believe we had a first reading um because the way the memo is worded it makes it sound like staff worked on the policy and that there hasn't been there was a substantial amount of board policy work and i say and and community engagement um around the policy and then our normal process would be we'd have a first reading and then we'd go out for a
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comment my my recollection is we did all of that again several months of work and then it had a first reading and then we had a demand to bargain and that's where as you referenced the um because of the pandemic and other things we had to bargain it's in the queue um but i'm not sure that i want to make sure that we actually capture like how much work has actually gone into it today because there's been a fair amount of both board time staff time and also community engagement around it absolutely i remember the extensive community engagement process so we'll make sure as we're responding we give a full explanation um the third one was um recommendation 18b um and that's maintaining um a consistent feedback loop with teachers educational assistants parents and other stakeholders it kind of goes on it's a um so in in section b it was about a data um tracking and coaching and so the district did issue an rfp and um uh for a data system and they didn't get in response what they were looking for since then our chief of system performance has been hired and he and the chief of student support services the two of them working together on creating a system and at the same time the oregon department of education is creating more of a statewide initiative in this area and actually offering through the student success act grant dollars to support this database work so while it is um behind schedule from what we really originally thought in the pandemic it is there is a process in place at the state level and we have leadership in our district that are working with it so it's in the works and that is the end of the those are the three items that were behind that are um behind schedule we did not do a score card for this meeting because we are doing actually a more of a report to the secretary of state in the month of december rather than a scorecard and that will be much more informative than the scorecard and we'll have the um kind of hopefully closure to some of these items as as we go forward okay are there any um questions from committee members i had a quick question about the rfp um i just couldn't understand by the way it was uh worded if we're talking about an rfp to search for um bus for vendors that can provide both a north and east side and the west side are we looking to split the work up between a vendor that would have either or so we allow for um a vendor to bid on one part um or both parts so what it okay and i i appreciate that you're um trying to increase competition that's always good you know good management of public funds um so so that's why i was asking because it seems like if there's one vendor that has the capacity to do both that might cut out smaller vendors that could do one or the other so i was just curious if we were trying to provide opportunities as well customer service and the response time um in terms of let's say we have a bus breakdown which happens um if you have one breakdown in southwest and your you know support team is 30 to 45 minutes away um it you know it takes a long time to get help to that um broken down bus right yeah yeah so it it'll pro provide a better um customer service experience for our students and parents as well yeah yeah thank you any other questions or comments kate are you waving goodbye are you signaling i'm signaling i have a few questions um on the rsp uh and you know the idea of splitting with more than one company is there going to be adequate staff then to manage you know more than one company in this area so currently we've both um pps trans student transportation i'm getting an echo and i'm not sure why so if you keep hearing me stop the um right now we have um most of our special education transportation with portland public
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schools transportation department and then we also have a contracted service that has the large buses and some special ed routing so the combination um between the two we have the dispatching in two locations but we have more the management team um that manages the contract as well as the in-house student transportation so uh there's a both a director and an assistant director and then we have some field supervisors and trainers and such um so they have the capacity and actually believe um it would be providing that better service by breaking it into two so they're i'm looking forward to seeing um the initial um meeting we have a mandatory bidders meeting to get questions answered and so they're interested in um seeing um who comes and what questions they have to ask so we we believe it it'll be a better um solution for the district as a whole all right that's yep no that sounds good um the other question i had was on the secretary of state um report or go with the three items and i noticed you know two of them um touch on teacher training and i know we had the discussion about the request to bargain on the second one um but that also was in that third one and so i don't know if it's appropriate if there is any work that's been done in terms of training maybe particularly with newer teachers if that's something that could be highlighted so we have great culture for mts multiple years of support for our students um multi-tiered support student supports and with that we have um trainings going through um eventually it's over a three year period going through all schools and all teachers so there is teacher training in process the part that's behind schedule is the rfp for not the rfp but the database um component of tracking the records so um of student information so the training in terms of how um for uh working with the students um component and the teacher training that part is in place and is in progress and has a consistent process going forward okay thank you claire you're welcome claire um i believe we have the um a board agenda item related to the board's um work session um on the board oversight on the secretary of state audit items i'm wondering if it would be possible to also get the district scorecard when we have that or the the scorecard that's going to be proposed to be submitted to the secretary of state um on the implementation if we could have that at the same time that the board has its agenda item on its particular items so um we have certainly reached out to all staff that are responsible for responding to the recommendations and we have asked them to submit them so that we can include it in a board packet so we are hoping for that result that's right okay um and that's scheduled for the december 15th meeting is that correct okay i'm getting the thumbs up from roseanne so we'll have that as an agenda item there's no action from the audit committee uh on this particular agenda item um if there's no other questions or discussion i'll move to the next item if that's okay i'll oh uh yeah just just one thing uh not a question but um thank you claire for the update uh this is informative i appreciate it you're welcome we always allow thank yous um so uh the next agenda item and just before we go to that i'm just gonna ask quickly um is there any public comment do we need to allow for that in the time frame of the meeting i don't have anybody signed up okay perfect um because i anticipate maybe this next item might go a little bit longer than
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we anticipated um or um allocated time for so as a reminder uh this committee made a recommendation to the to the full board which was then approved by the full board which um was a draft uh 2020 21 audit plan audit topics and we specifically did not take action on one of the items that had been advanced around facilities and instead at the day before the audit committee meeting we had two recommendations from board members on alternative audits and um i want to share my appreciation to our two internal performance auditors that they spent the time between the last meeting and this meeting and scoped out the two audits that had been potentially recommended and we have um today before us um the three i think uh audit scopes that we could we have for consideration and ideally i'd like to have us move forward with recommending one of these topics to the full board to add to the 2021 audit plan and the two topics that were added were was the um a audit on um esl and then also the hardship transfers process and so um i'm going to turn this now over to um auditor hanson uh to share uh a brief overview everybody should have the materials in your packet um and then we can have uh once we have the why don't we have the overview and maybe hold questions and discussion until um we've had the overview of the two new ones and maybe very very very brief on the one we already heard on facilities but the two new topics and then we can have questions and discussions so go ahead please um thank you am i unmuted yes okay so you i provided two documents that you guys should have the first one is a similar format to the way in which i presented the other audit topics for consideration it looks like this so you have this document that has the full breakdown of the three audit options and then i also just wanted i did a little powerpoint here to kind of walk you through those so i will start with that so what julia just said lets me skip my first slide because it's just a background saying hey these two were approved and then we wanted to discuss three additional ones for the following so i'm going to talk a little bit about the hardship transfer audit um again you have these documents and and the other layout so these are just a little highlights but for this audit what we would do is determine whether the district's decision um related to hardship transfer petitions are adequately supported and whether they the process has a disproportionate or inadequa inequitable impact on a school or student community um it's a very broad high level audit objective purpose and you know that's intentional because when we get in and we start planning the audit we can drill down to where we are really seeing specific risks um but this is very high level but um that is the primary objective is to look at those decisions and see if they're adequately supported and then also look at the impact of those decisions on schools in student communities the there is a potential challenge here that i i did want to share and um first i did hear in the the work session last night there was some board discussion about this audit and one point of clarification i did reach out to enrollment and campaign it's not 2500 petitions approved there were 2500 petitions that were submitted and i followed up with them and only about a thousand of them were actually approved but when we're testing we're going to look at the approval and denial you know so from the full population of all those who submitted
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but challenge here is in relation to supporting documentation and um the district enrollment and transferring department doesn't really have a formalized way of saving the documentation that they take into consideration for this decision making and so um because of that they're going to need time to gather that supporting documentation if we do this audit we'll make the request and they are going to need quite a bit of time to gather that information from a variety of sources to be able to support their decision so i just wanted to make sure that i point out that potential challenge it's going to take a lot of time and effort on not on our auditing staff my mayor catherine and myself but for the enrollment and transferring department it will take a significant amount of time for them to gather this information um but to be honest because of that it raises the it raises the audit to a higher level risk because you have a formal system for saving that documentation and so that actually makes it a little bit more risky and why you'll see that it's one of my top i've changed my opinion i really do want to do this one um but anyways okay so the next one is the esl audit um very some we you know this is a great audit and um there's a need for it i will say that in 2006 the district performance auditor that was there and the time did do a esl audit and i talked to district staff in the esl department and they actually you know there's one person there who is still with the district um it was there during that time and they really saw a lot of value from that audit so um one potential challenge here in relationship to actually there's two potential challenges but i listed this one it's because the district or the esl department is restructuring right now and they are moving underneath humanities and that process is taking place right now and and when in the past what i've found typically is an audit will add more value if the significant restructuring has been fully completed and implemented and then we do the audit um doing it midway through a significant restructuring is really difficult um to give recommendations if there are any but it's also really difficult for staff who are undergoing a lot of change anyways the other potential challenge here is the virtual environment i would say that um i would really much like to reach out to the esl student community to get feedback in relationship to the audit and we will have a barrier of language and when we add the additional barrier of virtual it's really going to make it hard for me to reach out to those communities to hear from them to get input it affects them so the audit needs i need to talk to them hopefully that makes sense and then this last one is the facility usage and building rental audit which was my initial proposal but as i said i i have um reconsidered and i would like to go with the hardship audit um but here one of the benefits of doing the facility usage audit sooner rather than later is because of proponent virus like right the the facility usage of our buildings has almost gone away during the coronavirus um so if we were able to complete the audit and make recommendations then when the facility usage gets back up to scale what it normally is they can implement any any recommendations we have immediately you know moving forward and they wouldn't have a lot already on the books because there's nothing there so that is one benefit of doing the facilities audit now um versus later but later is fine as well so with that being said um my next step is you know we would really need the audit committee to select one of these and we are requesting to move that forward in the next board meeting for full approval thank you so i'm going to ask if any committee members maybe before we get to any sort of discussion or preferences let's address any
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questions that individuals may may have i had a question about the hardship or a comment rather about the hardship transfer just that um i think it's great we're gonna look at who's requested and who's gotten in uh that's really thorough i'm curious if you can disaggregate your the data that you get back from this audit by race um and i would encourage you to look at um equity impacts also by race and then also i'm just i'm sure you'll do this but to be really thorough about seeing if we can find out the reasons um so we can as you're doing the data analysis piece you'll be able to categorize clump theme those reasons why why people are requesting those hearts that's a story i'd i'd i'd love to read i'd love to know why why we have 2500 requests any other questions or comments director bailey did you um you're mute not anymore yeah okay uh one i'm happy that the hardship uh transfer is i'd be really happy to see that move forward a couple of years ago we did get a data dump from enrollment and transfer and it did have um i was looking for it i'm not sure if i just got it in paper or if there was i actually had files either now but it did have that kind of disaggregation uh school to school movement um and so we theoretically should be able to get that detail i'm i was surprised to learn today from our auditor that there is no basically no case management form or whatever uh that's any record that's kept as a just a even a simple formal piece of paper documenting what happened paper or electronic um that to me right there was worth the price of admission alone um that's to me that's just a glaring oversight i think i do want to clarify just a hit a tad on that i wouldn't say that there's nothing but they just don't store they don't have a way of storing that decision-making process so for example if they emailed a a teacher or to say hey this student you know whatever and then they get the email back with the feedback and that feedback from the email informs their decision they don't save that email it's it's in their inbox you know which is why it's going to take a long time for them to go through it and but there's no formal way of pulling all of the inputs and saving it in a place so that decision is supported by those inputs hopefully does that make sense oh that clarification a little bit i don't want i want to give them credit i don't want to misrepresent what they have going on um but there's no formal way of storing that information um hopefully that clarification helps a little bit director bailey um can i just you're not but you might have another question but i wanted to see kate was having to drop off at six and maybe yeah um but kate did you have anything you wanted to add before you dropped off i'd note in the comments you say you approve adding the um hardship transfer audit to the work plan in yeah yeah um i had we had talked earlier and um i agree waiting on the esl audit i think that one's really important to do as well but it sounds like this would not be the time to do that so that's that i would be fine doing the hta one great yep thank you thanks everyone appreciate your participation uh back to you uh director bailey i'm done you're done okay anybody parker were you yep um i'd also uh like to echo what both director bailey and the past have said um i i also personally think that it's uh it's a worthwhile endeavor um and the data that's
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uh extracted from that whole process might aid in um i guess more more thoroughly uh looking into the differences between schools and why families are switching and i know in in previous discussions um that's that's uh was something that that you highlighted um was that it's you know the data's out there it's just um you gotta do a little uh digging and it requires time to find um but uh desegregating that um into various categories um i think would be um super interesting and also um a useful um you know a useful report uh to have but no no specific questions at this time anyone else just um just want to add that historically the hardship transfer well the the lottery transfer has been disproportionately higher use of white families uh hardship transfer historically has been disproportionately higher use um by families of color and and i haven't seen data for a couple of years but um that's that's been the pattern um and there's also been the the rumor mill has been that the people in the know can get their kid a transfer um and if we if we don't have a transparent system where it's clear what the decision-making rules are or where there's some subject subjectivity coming in then we're open to those kind of rumors anyway anyone else um i i think i'm gonna um my position would be uh similar to kate's i do think the esl audit is definitely worthy of continuing to keep on the on the audit list and we have a number of those um and i think this is um it's not that the topics aren't um aren't a priority but there's sometimes there's a sequencing that um makes makes a difference and i think in this particular case it makes a difference to sequence this when we're so back in school we also given that we're in the midst of a very large community conversation around enrollment and balancing this seems particularly relevant and will be useful to have some data i will say that there there's a lot of data that the policy committee received about a year ago um like where where students were transferring from and to um that i think was really interesting and if i look at the amount of um work we're doing to adjust maybe a school by a hundred students or so um it's important to be able to at a minimum um have looked at this so we can tell school communities instead of them saying well if we were there weren't all these hardship transfers the school wouldn't be overcrowded or we'd have a different mix i think it would be really useful for us to have this data so that we can respond to those either community questions or assertions with data and facts so i'm supportive of the hardship transfer it sounds like um there's a seems to be a consensus in the committee um the one issue that i would raise was just on the around the scoping um and it's maybe this is just the high level and the further scoping this will come out but it has that there's a risk the district does not have adequate internal controls in place to ensure decisions related to hardship transfer petitions are adequately supported um i would add something around like that there's consistent criteria or there's set criteria so that um again this is the other thing that comes up consistently that there's some criteria that people just have to figure out how to get into or create their own criteria um and then the other issue would be around transparency and i think um this has been some of the direct transparent but i there are a lot of um perception and maybe misperceptions about
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the hardship transfer process and i think the more this audit can provide some transparency and also some recommendations so that our school community feels that there's a transparent fair and equitable process uh for hardship transfers that will make our i think our decision making in other areas um stronger and also i think more accepted by the community i was laughing because those two words were exactly the ones i used when i was talking earlier this morning with janice which two words were those consistent and transparent great okay i i agree with that i wanna i wanna just jump in and say um it absolutely you know we we do need to be transparent and we do need to be consistent having that decision criteria will be really helpful and i just wanted to voice my support for the esl it's a really important audit um but i i agree that it's going to be difficult to do it now but it could be prioritized for when we open back up we could maybe move that up to the top of the um work plan for for whatever that is so for sure um so just to kind of respond to those two terms um i i assure you that the purpose of the audit the broader objective is broad enough to be to drill down in that and um you know i'm those two terms were very problematic from my perspective there is no clearly defined criteria um on the website it's very specific it says we will consider any reason for a hardship transfer there's no criteria identified so having clear criteria i didn't put it in there because of of there is none um should there be great question um we can address that as part of the audit but there is no criteria so i didn't use you know that clear criteria um and the consistency and transparency were also a little problematic but thank you guys all so much for your feedback on that you're really helping me hone in on a couple of key terms that i i should really address more in a more robust way in the actual audit assuming you guys approve it thank you and i also there's also a um i'll forward it um to um janice and mary catherine we had some community feedback based on the discussion last night at the board meeting that can share with you and then maybe roseanne you can also or cara put it in the record um in support of the hardship transfer audit so um i'm looking for do i have a motion from anybody to um for the audit committee to recommend to the full board that this be added the hardship transfer ought to be added to the 2021 audit committee so moved second okay removed in second all in favor aye aye okay um any any opposition all right um so we'll send a unanimous recommendation to the full board that we proceed with this with a um also a a follow-on that we think the esl audits an important audit to have happen and that should be kept in the in the queue for when we reopen okay um next agenda item is the office of internal performance auditing um performance metrics and um janice before you start this will you tell us what um is this a inform or you'd like us to take some sort of action or provide feedback what's the committee action requested here you're on mute yeah so the next so my last slide was what's the next step we i would like to request that you guys approve the the key performance indicators that i'm proposing um and because i do think it's important that you approve them before i spend the time of gathering the data and maintaining that data over the course of time i don't want to do that if if um if you guys are not going to approve them but what i would say it is very you keep performance indicators for internal audit departments
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are very important um industry standard oh most have them and i want to have them as well so that's what the objective is so i'll go back if that's okay with you and i'll kind of do my my spill now okay all right so um just as a side note i um was talking to kate earlier and she gave me a tidbit of feedback on these performance measures and as a result i updated one of my slides so i'm going to show you the updated slide and then i will email this to um roseanne so she can get the updated one posted so best practices so the the council of great city schools did a white paper on internal auditing and what they say in that document is um it is best practices for internal performance auditors to utilize key performance indicators to set goals measure performance and provide information to stakeholders so that's kind of why i'm going there um i am suggesting three initial um performance indicators the first one is the number of audits completed per fte so there's two of us mary katherine and i so that would be three audits per year as a target um the second one is the recommendation implementation rate and this is the one i i did a little bit of tweaking on so i'm going to go into another slide to kind of provide a little bit more information about that um but the target there is 75 um and then one informational performance measure that really supports key performance measure one is the average audit hours and number of audits completed it it provides that background information for how do we achieve kpi number one so there's no target but um it is information that i do want to provide so um sorry this is the one that i updated so for the recommendation implementation rate one of the things that i didn't have in my slide was time period and um and kate really brought that to my attention and so i did some research and um what i would like to go with is a target of 75 of the recommendations will be implemented within two years of the report date um i will say that i didn't have a much time after i talked to kate about that to research other options but i did find one example and they had five years so they wanted 75 over the course of five years i think that for us two years is is a much more realistic expectation and um so i am proposing that to be calculated off of two years of the report date does that make a little bit of sense hopefully um so i will update this slide so um and send that over so you will see that i am proposing it with a time period of two years for that implementation um so the the information performance measure you know this helps to measure um efficiency which is why um we are proposing it but it is important to note that audits vary in length depending on the scope and the complexity of the audit and um i think you guys saw in the proposal some audits are like 800 hours some audits unfortunately like the contracts on it were ridiculous um but you know the other ones are maybe 300 hours so it really varies some so this is information that we just need to provide so you can keep these things in in con in i guess think about them in context of what's going on um so i have one more kpi that i would like for you guys to give me the go ahead to pursue and that would be oddity feedback um it's a common key for performance indicator um and what that would entail is i would develop a survey that i would send out to staff who were impacted by the audit and asked them questions one of the questions would be how awesome is janice just kidding obviously um but i've used these um and on it places that i've worked in the past where we send it out
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and the questions are very high level i i did some just to kind of give you a sneak peek of what some of those questions might be would be something like this you know did the internal audit team solicit feedback from you and your staff during the entrance conference to ensure your concerns were adequately addressed during the audit another question might be you oh my goodness sorry this is kind of making these um talking today so do you feel like the scope of the audit was sufficient to address key risks or um you know did we communicate the audit objectives clearly so these are the type of questions that i think would add value and and feedback for me to and mayor catherine of course to do our job in a in a way in which it's most efficient and effective and impactful and giving staff an opportunity to provide that feedback i think is really important um some staff have no problem telling me when i you know how they think things are going but for those who would rather provide some sort of feedback in a survey i think this will really add value so with your approval i'll move forward and create the survey and submit those questions and in the ranking for you guys to approve before it formally becomes a process in which i do so in conclusion um i am requesting that you guys ask me a bunch of questions about these items first of course but then approve these for moving forward um julia there we go let's jump in let's first take the two proposed kpis and um people either can ask questions or indicate uh whether they support um those as performance metrics so any any questions okay any um any discussion great thanks i i would say i really um appreciate um this this was not something that the committee asked the office of the internal performance auditors to put together but something that's self-initiated just to start creating some benchmarks so really appreciate janice you and mary catherine proposing these i think you know i kind of wrestled with um the second one somewhat because um you can have sometimes good recommendations that don't get implemented and like should that be a measurement of whether um the auditors are doing their job um it may be um a factor outside of their control but i i think that despite that hesitation um it would be good to get started and then see see how it goes and we can um make adjustments but to get it started and i'm assuming the the third one is more the informational performance measure is a i'm sorry the survey is more just it's more subjective by nature and there's not really a specific metric but feedback for you all is that how it should be well so what i will do is for each of the questions it will be on a scale of agree to disagree from one to ten and then we would set a target of we're hoping to achieve at least a level seven or whatever it is that is reasonable of course so um that been that there will be a target for that once i get the survey dialed in but it will have a range for people to respond to the questions do you agree on a scale of one to ten and then we will set a target for what we're hoping that the responses will be okay great um so is there any objection or can we move ahead and i don't think this is something we need to refer to the full board this is more of a committee um processes go ahead um just on kpi number two first of all yeah this is great this is a perfect example of managing up you very kindly on your own volition
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recommended for your own performance you know that we look at these kpis um on kpi number two i'm curious if so if if there's a 75 recommendation rate is there i'm wondering where the management response comes into this so you know if management agrees with eighty percent then are we looking at seventy percent five percent of those or are we looking at seventy five percent of the hundred percent can you tell us i love numbers by the way and and also on the um on the survey i think that's interesting that you had it on a you had on a scale a likert scale right from like disagree strongly to agree very highly and you were going to set a numerical target when i first looked at it i was like oh this is a nice counterbalance to this slide that we're looking at that is very quality quantitative and we're looking that them the survey has a potential to be qualitative and therefore can contribute to just really like continuous improvement how you do your job better if there's approach that could be you know an informational helpful to you instructive and help drive how you do the next audit so i i saw them as two one quantitative one qualitative and together um they give you a a broader picture of the function of the office of internal auditor so i i think that's i think it's great um i've never heard of i've never heard of uh looking at the kpis this way so i'm in rover back to number two um and you know with kate's point and julia's point i first read it as you do an audit management responds and says we agree or we disagree or and that's what i was thinking about this the 75 percent um because that implementation within two years or five years or whatever is not to me that's beyond the audit per se and is more a function of management and the board really keeping track of things um so i do very much sorry go ahead yeah so so i'm wondering if it if it should be that initial agreement and again uh well like what we saw in the earlier the sos audit of yeah we agree with this we went out tried to find some software we couldn't find some software so maybe we come back and renegotiate around you know stuff like that happens but it's that initial agreement yes we're gonna implem put this into our work plan to implement to me anything beyond that i mean you you've done your job you pointed it out it's up to management and the board at that point to make sure that happens or that there's a clear we tried to do that there are issues because things got complicated so i totally hear what you're saying and i really appreciate this feedback because being very mindful about the potential for weight you know like what's within my control or the office's control and what's kind of outside is important but i do want to differentiate a little bit here because we are internal auditors although we are independent because we do report directly to the board and via the audit committee you know so and we follow auditing standards but it is important that internal audit is very mindful of the recommendations that we're making and um you know i know that i may have mentioned everybody that i passed my my final cia test so i'm officially certified now but in that study material thank you um in that same material one of the questions that was very specific was to talk about recommendations that are disagreeable and whether or not they should be made so there is a little bit of a back and forth industry-wide in relationship to that but what i will say is um the input having some sort of of either recommendation implementation rate or agree or disagree with the recommendation is really important to help internal auditors be mindful of those recommendations and
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impact that they can and cannot have um and it is really important so i do appreciate that and i would be open to considering um the agree versus disagree um but one of the things that actually came up in a couple of audit previous audit committees is we don't really have a criteria for which management is required to adhere to for agreeing or disagreeing so they can agree or disagree um or partially disagree or you know so um versus implementation did they deal with the issue so how can an internal audit be most impactful it's most impactful when the district implements those recommendations so that's why i did want to recommend the implementation rate as the kpi but i totally hear what you're saying especially and would be open to kind of doing agree versus disagree but um it's hard but i want to get something going and track this data and be accountable for the work that we are doing so i'm looking at the time um right now which is three minutes before uh we're supposed to end and i'd like to end on time so i'm um i'm going to suggest something in a moment but i just want to make sure that um jackson and parker did you have anything you wanted to add on this section and nathaniel oh nathaniel's just just now uh joined back um i don't have any um recommendations other than um i i think it's fantastic that um you uh you janus want to um to really have some concrete uh performance measures um for yourself but other than that no yeah um i think it is an important metric to keep track of i don't necessarily know if it's a great performance indicator because i mean implementation could be more of a reflection on the accountability loop that the board plays a role in so i'm just wondering like i mean whatever you want really i mean you could you if you wanted to be a performance indicator that's great but i think that the recommendation implementation comes from multiple different levels not just your own office so i think it's hard to say like the this recommendation implementation is all on you okay yeah i want to um actually close thank you uh jackson and parker want to ask claire did you have anything you would like to share about the kpis uh no not at this time okay um so i'm gonna suggest that we um support the kpi recommendations that janice has made and just what i'm going to ask you to do is put together something a little bit more formal like here's how you would actually monitor them when you would do that what it would look like what the survey would look like and then let's get it on just as a short agenda item for a future committee meeting um and i think there's been some really good questions raised about whose performance is kpi number two or reflection of but i do think that no matter what the number is it's going to tell us something it may tell us something about the auditors um it may say something about the board oversight and it may say something about staff implementation but we can i think we can go from there so unless there's an objection i think we should ask janice and mary katherine to proceed any objections okay um great so thank you for taking the initiative on that um the we have no public comment um nobody signed up for public comment and then the last the only other agenda item was um the community member slot and um i just want to clarify i think we've only had one response is that correct claire and i sorry to put you on the spot i should have i'm asked before the meeting but i'm pretty sure megan's only forwarded one application to me yeah that's all i'm aware of but i can check in with her tomorrow okay that'd be great and i'm gonna and may i also just um nudge a couple people i've spoken to about this as well um one from a group of uh financial type auditing people yes definitely and um to help you in your nudging i'm gonna
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ask roseanne can you or claire who's ever the holder of the application um to just send it around to everybody on this call um so that everybody has in their inbox tomorrow is the reminder and that way for example michelle if you have particular people and i have i have two that i need to send it out to as well just as a reminder but um we'll do kind of a last call that's great thank you okay anything else for the um before you close the meeting if not um thanks everybody for your time and all the hard work of staff to prepare for the meeting and support the committee's work very much appreciated


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