2021-02-24 PPS School Board Audit Committee Meeting

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2021-02-24
Time 16:30:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
Load video
YouTube


Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education's Audit Committee - 2/24.21

00h 00m 00s
we have a um not not a long agenda today we have all committee members here um including our student rep committee members so i don't i don't think it's necessary to do introductions all of our because all of our committee members are here um i would just ask staff if you're presenting or answering a question just to identify yourself on the first time that you speak so we have that for the minutes um with that i'm going to just jump right in and ask um [Music] for the first or second agenda item which is the office of internal performance auditors activity status update awesome all right this is janice hanson i'm the district's internal performance auditor and i have shared my screen with you guys and hopefully you can see what i'm presenting these documents are the same that's in board books but i thought i would share just so we can all be on the same page um so a quick status update on all of the audits that we have going on first the ach audit um we did complete the um really the first part of the audit and um that's been posted on the pps audit reports page and in the april meeting coming up i will be able to give you guys an update on an eta for when the final piece of the testing just in relationship to the setup of new vendors to the ach payment program and changes of vendor information will be done also right now we have going on the pcard audit field work is underway and we do anticipate being ready to present that report at our next audit committee meeting in april next audit would be the health and safety checks audit as we discussed in our audit committee meeting last um last time you guys expressed an interest in us doing some testing for lippy and in addition to the hybrid model so we have begun that planning and we are working to test some lippy sites and we do anticipate doing kind of our first on-site visit in early next month next on and then also on the agenda the health and safety checks audit is a separate thing on our agenda today so i'm not going to do a lot of details about it right here but i do have a more detailed status update to provide you and later in the meeting next audit it will be the hardship transfer audit we are looking to begin planning on this audit in early may um sorry early march um you know with the health and safety checks audit we will prioritize the health and safety checks on it but we will get started on the hardship transfer audit planning here pretty soon following that audit we will begin working on the student body activity audit and that probably will be tentatively midsummer and that is everything that i have for the oipa status update and just a clarification because some the question could be asked on some of these things like in a year in the covered year some of these things this wouldn't be the year to audit um but can you just briefly describe what the time period is that you're auditing say for example for the p card because it's not this past year correct so it does include this last year um one the scope of the p-card audit um really needs to consider transactions that took place subsequent to the secretary of state's audit report one of the objectives of our audit is to really see the implementation of some of the recommendations or concerns identified in that audit so the audit period we have selected is just this last audit or fiscal year so 7 1 2019 through 6 30 of 2020 and we have also um planning to test transactions further into the current
00h 05m 00s
physical year up to and including the end of october of 2020. so it's about a year plus a couple of months um and the thought behind that was the covet kind of struck in the beginning of 2020 so the transactions in the fall of 2019 we could compare some of that activity to see what differences there are between that time period and then the fall of 2020 which would have been under covet activity i have a clarifying question as well so is that you're looking at the rate or the implementation of the recommendations pretty soon after that audit seven months after the audit and then comparing it to a length of time out from the audit that did i get that right yes to see the rate or the how how the implementation has happened right so we typically will do a scope of the autoscope of a physical year um but because the secretary of state's auto report didn't come out until january of 2019 um making sure there was adequate time for the district to get together their plan and fully implement it and um so it's a little bit non-traditional in the terms of a fiscal year it extends a little bit beyond a physical year just to make sure that what we're seeing is representative of the current activities and procedures the way the district is currently operating excellent thank you anything else um i actually have the second agenda item so if it's okay with you guys i can move forward to the next item is that okay yes okay yes all right so the next item on the agenda is a follow-up discussion related to the oipa performance measures um these slides were you know in board books but i'm sharing my screen with you guys just to help first i left in this slide that was in our slide deck last time i talked about this just to be a reminder of why are we even doing this and it is because it is best practices so um that's why we want to generate some kpis for our activity next there were a couple of kpis that we discussed last time kpi 1 and two i put in purple here within the two years of the report date as kind of a clarification in relationship to kpi number two and so you could kind of see um the purple is just the update for this time versus last time for kpi 3 this is not something that we talked about last time so i wanted to draw your attention to this we talked last time about whether or not kpi 2 which is the recommendation implementation rate whether or not that was a true measure of oip activity what it is and what is not within our control and we talked about whether or not the rate of management's agreement with recommendations might be a better or an additional um item so i thought about it and i thought well let's track them both so unless there's some objectives i would like to kind of add kpi 3 because both of those are a little bit related but slightly different and might tell us something different on um on our activity so i'm just i'm just curious would it make more sense to flip them to um because the first one would be rate of management's agreement so because if they didn't agree if they didn't agree there's not going to be any implementation excellent yeah and i will i mean it's a small thing i know it's like it doesn't change the data but it just like yeah and the way you think of things sequentially it does make sense i will flip on your kpi number two and then by really i was i was about to say the exact same thing so okay yeah no problem and then also last time we talked about informational performance measures and i'm just changing the term to say informational data i thought perhaps it might be a better
00h 10m 00s
explanation than say informational performance measures what does that even mean it's really the data to help inform kpi one um so for to death for discussion today um i wanted to talk about when and how we're going to report on kpis how we will monitor and calculate kpis and then i wanted to provide you guys with the draft survey questions that we came up with so first when and how are we going to report on kpis which is really exciting so we are going to use the district's fiscal year which it begins july 1st and ends june 30th of each year and that will be our reporting period we will use the summer months to compile our data and prepare the report and then we will present the oipa kpis report to the audit committee in its september audit committee meeting for example in september of 2021 we will provide the first oipa kpis um report on activities during the 2021 school year fiscal year any questions about that this is more generic um or broader question for pps claire do we in anywhere else um have a set of kpis that are measured and reported in in this sort of format so we have um in our strategic plan and our sia um work um tied to um there are budgeting from last year we have some there we also have kpis both instructional and operational to the council great city schools that we report and then benchmark compared to other districts but those are more of a standard urban district kpi rather than where a department has a kpi and are they reported on um our fiscal year um they do they are based on fiscal year but there's a cert like for instance the operational one for 2020 just opened up within the past month and we're collecting data right now okay doesn't our bondwork have essentially a bunch of kpis they do in um well they're working with you know their um in uh performance auditors for sure and they have a scorecard that they're reporting to the bond accountability committee yeah that's that's what i'm thinking of that scorecard okay i will move on to the next slide and i just want to say it is not my intent to read this entire slide to you guys it's a lot of information my thought was to clearly document how we will calculate the kpis and it will be transparent because it's in a public meeting and also in the future if there's ever any question perhaps myself or mary catherine are no longer with the district this can serve as a template for whoever is calculating them it's clearly documented how to calculate it so that's what this slide is for um so i'm just going to move on to the next slide um one note in relationship specifically to kpi number three that i did want to bring to your attention is currently management has the option to select agree partly agree partly disagree or disagree with the recommendations in our audit report and so for the purposes of the target calculation we're just going to group agree and just agree and partly agree together and partly disagree and disagree together to report on the calculation for hitting the target hopefully that makes sense all right so this next is just related to the informational data so i'll please pass that's just documentation of how we will calculate it um last time we talked about a future kpi being an oddity feedback um survey so that's what i want to talk to you guys a little bit about um we utilize the iia the institute of
00h 15m 00s
internal auditors survey template and we've modified it to make it a little bit more applicable specifically for a school district and i also pulled a bunch of other examples of surveys that are used by other districts to help inform the creation of the template so the temp the oddity survey rating scale so we consider like honest how will we ask the quest people to respond to the questions on a scale of one to ten um and what i think is this will add or provide us the most valuable feedback so based off the way the questions are stated as i go of them the way this um rating scale will make more sense but what i thought is whether they can strongly agree with the statement agree with the statement neither agree or disagree disagree strongly disagree or not done so this the format of the survey will have a couple of different sections introductory audit scope questions auditor knowledge and professionalism questions and audit communication and reporting questions i did though in some open-ended questions and optional contact information so first the introductory questions are department name which will be optional but if they would like to disclose their department that would be awesome um audit topic for example what audit are you referring to in this survey is it the contracts audit or the ach audit and a space will be provided for them to answer that question and then my position closely relates to either management or staff then we the survey will move on to audit scope questions and janice can i just ask a question um and maybe this is a question for claire do you do you think people divide themselves into management and staff uh claire you're on mute yeah i see the um i think management and staff i mean the management is part of staff right um so i i think they overlap for sure yeah we don't need to spend a lot of time on this but i um to me i'm not sure i'm not sure people would know which category they're in um because you can be a manager and i think feel like your line staff i mean i i uh jess i know conceptually what you're you're thinking of but um and again we should we don't need to take time in this meeting but there may be need to be a refinement of that i i think that what we're trying to get out is the positionality to power yeah decision making and so like let's offline take this conversation i think it's a good one it's good to locate yourself in space at all times and this is what that question is getting at are you a decision maker and where are you in the in the hierarchy it does tell a story thank you so much for that feedback that's exactly what i'm looking for so as we move forward with these please jump in as we go and i will reach out to you guys offline to get some ideas on how i could better make that distinguishing question more add more value to what it is we're trying to achieve by even asking the question yeah i also want to add one thing just as a note for everyone on the call just as a learning thing is that um when we talk about and we refer to that document about like how white supremacy shows up and it's in this like either or sort of very binary space that this gives us this question here gives us an opportunity to be kind of both and as claire you know was referring to this like it management is also line staff and it gives us an opportunity to kind of expand our thinking and challenge everyone else to sort of not be just an either or you know people all the time to be both and awesome thank you so much all right so for the next section it's questions related to the audit scope and there were a lot of options but i did narrow it down to two so oipa staff solicited feedback from you and your team to ensure your concerns were adequately addressed during the audit and then also audit objectives and purpose scope and audit processes
00h 20m 00s
were clearly communicated during the initial phase of the audit so those were the two things i wanted to really make sure we're doing we're soliciting feedback to make sure our scope is appropriate and then also we are clearly communicating scope and processes and procedures so now when you think about the skill of um you know agree or not done so for example if the survey response were to say not done then that would be a lot more valuable for us to know to improve versus like a two a rating of a two on a scale of one to ten um so i've listed these knowledge and professionalism questions the iia survey template did have several questions on this topic so i wanted to include them this one right here that i have in bold and i've identified as um tentative i want to just kind of touch on that one with you guys a little bit um audited so oip auditors demonstrated a reasonable understanding of the area under review i think it's a great question it speaks to our knowledge of the topic that we're auditing however one thing that i've heard consistently in feedback is that a lot of times people feel as if we do not know what we're talking about because we ask so many questions and um or a lot of people will say oh we hate getting new auditors because we have to train the auditors well the auditors come with being trained but we do ask a lot of questions and orienting us directly to that specific situation oftentimes makes staff feel as if we don't know what we're talking about so i'm trying to get some feedback from some of my internal auditing colleagues on how they address this question in their survey and so i have it as tentative but if any of you have any ideas on how i might phrase that in a way in which it would add value and demonstrate our knowledge and that's what we're trying to determine what we're trying to get feedback on are we knowledgeable about the topic in which we're auditing um i won't go through each one but they are listed here for you guys i just wanted to touch on those couple um the open-ended questions um are an opportunity to get some of that qualitative feedback so the questions are were there aspects of the audit that you found particularly helpful and then are were there aspects of the audit that you found particularly challenging and then a third one which is hopefully just as wide open-ended question as we could come up with if you rated any of the earlier questions anything below average we welcome your comments outlining your concerns that pertain to that specific evaluation and hopefully that's open enough for people to say oh they didn't do this and then tell us what their thought is or questions or how can we improve that i have a quick question about this so and maybe you said it earlier but is this this is on a like a scale a likert scale from like totally agree to totally disagree how how will the person responding know if their responses are average or above or below average excellent point thank you um for this is the rating skill of the strongly agree down to not done so thank you for that i'm going to update that to say if you disagreed strongly disagreed or not done please give us some feedback yeah so sometimes with data analysis we we want to look at that scale and say well i'm going to group the first two together because that's generally agreeing depending on whatever you're reporting the data you're reporting you'll want to clump the like mostly people agree here again depending on what it is you're you're reporting on and what sort of results or hypothesis you're trying to support um so anyway yeah i just think for someone that isn't all nerdy about surveys to give them a way to tell where that line is might be maybe it's just a little narrative at the top of the question that says now we're going to ask you to figure out you know between one and seven where you land or something like that okay i'm going to update that because that language is definitely not consistent with the scale the lower than
00h 25m 00s
average i will update that to be related to the scale that we used um and maybe even add exactly what you just said okay then um at the very end of the survey i wanted to provide an opportunity to people to feel be heard in any variety in which ways in which they it works for them so perhaps you know they filled out the survey but they would really like to have a much more robust conversation about it at the end of the survey there is an option if you would like to be contacted by oipa or someone from the audit committee to discuss the results of the survey please indicate below and then provide an email address for that initial communication to set up a meeting and again you guys are the audit committee so i don't mean to volunteer you but i did think because i report to the board and not district administration it would be awesome if staff did feel like they could reach out to a member have a member of the audit committee respond to them if there were any concerns that they wanted to address with you guys so hopefully that's okay any objections to that no okay awesome then in um so for the survey we would like to include the survey in the report of oipa kpis that we'll do each september we won't have results in time for the september 2021 report but you can expect it in the september of 2022 report i also wanted to just touch on target so for some of the other kpis we did identify a target and for the survey what i am requesting is no current target expectation and then i would like to revisit a target expectation each year as we discuss the oipa kpi report and we can decide as we move forward where we want to set that target at but at least we can get started over the next year gather and present the information and then think about the value and establishing a target is that okay with everybody request a quick question um that you've got some auditing under your belt here roughly how many how many staff members have um you you both interacted with on an audit is it three is it 30 is it you can tell i'm not an auditor well so each does it depend on the audit because i would imagine it does it doesn't depend on the audit and so yeah so what i would envision is sending it out to pretty much anybody that we um interacted with on any significant level during the audit if we just emailed them and requested a document or someone in the it department prepared some data for us perhaps we don't they don't need to get a survey but i will at the exit conference one of the things i would like to ask is if management or whoever it is on the team has anybody specifically they want added to the list and i will include them in addition to our audit liaison of course claire and any other department managers or directors of any department that we audited for the p-card audit it's relatively small number of people because of were in the pcr department but for other audits like the contracts audit it was very extensive so in a situation because it did cross multiple departments that would be a situation where we want to send it out to a variety of people but oftentimes it's probably less than five of who i would anticipate getting a survey request did that answer okay awesome james yes i think i understand but just to just to make sure um it sounds like i think this is what you just clarified each person you interacted with would receive one and not just say the audit uh liaison correct yeah so we do try to identify a specific audit liaison
00h 30m 00s
for each of our audits oftentimes it is the director of whatever department it is that we're working in um you know and sometimes there's a couple of different layers of management in there we keep in the loop so we would um ideally send it to each of them and then also whoever it is that we really worked with on a significant level so like in the picard department we've been really been working with um the i think it's fiscal analyst position in that department and so we want to send it to them also so they can provide that feedback as well okay so so management and then anyone you interacted with at a significant level and then i think you mentioned anyone that is otherwise recommended yes okay i would like management you know to identify steps people who they specifically want it and then we'll send it you know um just to make sure covering all the bases anybody who wants to provide us feedback has that opportunity okay all right so next steps for this the audit committee can look forward to your very first oipa kpi report in september of 2021 again we won't have survey information for that report but i will and it will be kind of light because won't have a lot of data for this year but i'm going to start it in september of this year and give you what i have and and get this process going so it's just part of each year this is what we do um right now i'm still working to solicit a little bit of feedback on those survey questions so if any of you have you know end up reading over them a little bit want to give me some feedback please let me know then what i will do is get the survey actually set up in the template in which it will be sent out and i will send that out to you guys so you will know what it looks like to receive it and i will do that so you can take a look at it before i send it to anybody um for real feedback any questions or thoughts sounds good anybody kate or michelle i i i just think this is really great um i like that you're being inclusive um i love that there's a person in charge you probably know that from experience having one person to interface with is great yeah look it's all very good awesome jaclyn parker for kate looks good yeah love it awesome okay so the third thing on our agenda today is also something i'll be briefing you guys on so if it's okay i can transition into that yes please go ahead okay awesome so the next thing on the agenda is a more robust status update on the health and safety checks audit so what i did is i created this document and it's available for each of you in board books again just sharing to make sure we're all on the same page for this i took the audit plan from the approved audit plan that was already approved by the committee as well as the full board and i copied it in here just so we have a baseline of we're all on the same page of refreshing our memory about what it is exactly we're planning to do um one thing i did here is highlight this note um please forgive me for repeating myself but it's really important i just want to make sure everybody's on the same page that the audit will not determine the adequacy of the building safety plans it will only determine compliance with those building safety plans are there any questions about that before i move on it's just really important to clarify what we will and will not be doing no okay so current status we have begun planning to test some of the buildings that are offering lippy and and that's going to help prepare us for more wide scale testing once hybrid is offered we have identified a primary audit liaison who has been selected by district management and we are working together to create a communication plan on this audit specifically a lot of people want to know a lot of details about the audit and it affects a lot of different departments and so we're working collaboratively to make sure you know when i'm sending an email i'm
00h 35m 00s
ceasing all the people who would like to be in the know and um just making sure we're front loading the communication so everybody knows what to expect and there's no surprises you know the intent of this audit is not to surprise anybody or catch anybody it is really to work collaboratively to ensure compliance with um the building safety plan and the level of assurance that people know that we're checking to make sure we are complying with that building plan over time yes just along that line given that um this is sort of a top of mind for um many staff members and families um for it to be useful it's not going to be something we're going to you know get get the data on or whether you know just the the feedback six months from now because obviously that's not relevant what do what do you see as the turn around time so you visit a school you're you've got a checklist you're going through your items when does that get sort of pushed out either to like feedback to to stash um because if the philosophy is this isn't a we're gonna just report later but really um so that there can be if if needed um updates or corrective action taken with how will that data go back to the school or to the audit committee or great question thank you um so it's actually two bullet points down so if you don't mind i will um answer that question after i do my next bullet point is that okay yeah i missed that okay sorry so um the okay so let me just do this bullet point here so we have already been provided the list of the buildings um where lippy is being offered currently along with a list of buildings that is planning and the dates for which that rollout of lippy is planned so we've already gotten the list as well as all of the building safety plans for each of those buildings and we have begun to review those building safety plans we have also met with several members of district administration to provide an overview of the audit and get some general make sure they have a general idea of what to expect for the audit and also in a couple of these meetings we really wanted to dial in who wants to know what and when to build out that communication plan so um that's the so the next bullet here it says we are working to create a format um for students for to provide oipa with input on this audit so we have a couple of current volunteers um thankfully jackson and parker along with nathaniel have all volunteered to provide feedback and we are also looking to diversify the student input if you are aware of any students who you think might be interested in providing some input on this audit please send me an email with their contact information and i'll reach out and see if we can recruit a really diverse student group to give us some input may i um jump in um just for the students that are on the call thank you so much for just stepping up to student leadership it's important and you know it looks good on a resume and i'm going to challenge you to uh reach out to the people within your own community and and outside of your network too you know reach out to muslim american students to native american students and black students knowing what we know today and that's that you know the more diverse a team the stronger the outcomes the team comes up with and how important that is it's going to help you once you move away from portland to go to college hopefully and you'll have the experience of having been able you'll be able to answer the question like how did you diversify the team that you worked on and i think that's really an important still um especially coming from portland where we don't have as many opportunities but i'm going to issue a challenge for you to reach out beside outside of your networks to forward some names of people that we need to hear from on this committee i think it'll strengthen the outcomes and it'll be fun you'll get to learn about other cultures and it's a friendly challenge fun and it will be fun that's the key element you can you can describe how exciting it
00h 40m 00s
is to work on an audit to give feedback so i also want to well it would be a challenge to describe fun and auditing in the same sentence if you can do that you got you got it made i i i think if i think if we could figure out a way to do that we'd have you know quite a few uh biters um but thank you i direct you to pass you mentioned reaching outside of our uh network we did mention it to the dsc obviously that's pretty in our network um but it's been mentioned there um yeah i i too um when i when i work uh or when i have a more diverse team obviously it's just better all around and there are a few there are a few students at benson uh that come to mind that i'll be uh reaching out to but that's fantastic thank you for uh learning in the moment um and and auditing is fun i just want to share a quick story and that's that our statement that's that the city of portland used to when they were recruiting for audit positions and they have a fabulous position open right now they're saying you actually don't need to have um they're not looking for experience they're looking for someone who's curious and wants to dig deeper and like all of these other things that we've kind of been keeping this realm really tight without like thinking more expansively about you know do you need to have an auditing experience or do you just need to be like really curious about how things work um so anyway just to give that some thought thank you um parker i also think like the one piece about this this audit is it's so highly relevant to like whether we're going back to whether we're going back to school um whether we can participate in school activities in um way in ways in which it's both safe and which students want to that their there is potentially a really pertinent link for for students right now about what's going to be covered in this audit i i think it being of immediate consequence is another another reason that students would really um be enthusiastic so i yeah i think it'll be um i think it'll be good i know it's not i'm not always the most um uh flowery in my language but i think it will be uh a process that we have a lot of engagement with i just want to add one more thing i'm on a team currently at work and um there's a young woman we started working about a year ago together we're on a spatial justice team talking about mapping and zoning and inclusion in portland and she's african muslim and i learned this from working also in those communities i was really surprised to do a public meeting and nobody ever looked up at me when i was talking everybody was looking down and um in my current team i am realizing like we've done presentations and all kinds of meetings and and she doesn't ever say anything until she does and so she only speaks maybe once during a meeting but um she's extremely impactful and i learned recently that in her culture it's um very common to not to speak unless you have all the information and so it's typically going to be someone that's quieter until there's something meaningful to contribute so so that's to say that there are introverts and people from different countries that communicate and process information differently and just to be cognizant of that but not because someone's not talking and taking up a lot of room doesn't mean they're not interested and engaged and that's something i just learned recently myself thanks michelle um i wanted to bring up one other thing and that's uh and i don't know if this is true for other committee members um i haven't yet toured a school to see what it looks like how it's set up or to have somebody kind of run me through what the safety plan for is for that school so i'm wondering if that would be a useful exercise for us to give each of us more of a background in that and if that's so maybe we could all tour one side together safely spaced i know i would find that very informative to be able to have that tour to help me dial in my checklist a little bit based off real so i would appreciate that if um at least you can count me in i i think me and jackson as well and nathaniel also um or uh student representative shu i
00h 45m 00s
know dr byrd gave his uh uh video uh walk through the board meeting but i think being there and seeing it would be really helpful okay um claire would we talk to dan to set something like that up i can take the message um forward to him i'm happy to do that awesome so also in the last couple of board meetings um we have heard from a lot of really diverse students in reference to name changing process for their schools and i think director de pass and dr bailey mentioned hey these might be people to reach out to to get some input so i do plan to email shanice and ask to see if i can get some student email addresses to reach out to try to capture some of those students who are done with their volunteering for the name change and perhaps be excited to um provide some additional input all right so i want to add one little p one statistic and that's that you know for running for office or taking leadership positions that women have to be asked seven times um like to run for office or to step up into leadership and so just knowing that like just because you asked somebody one time it might be helpful to do a campaign of like let's ask this person there was a student that spoke at last night's meeting i thought would be great to ask um for her for her input so um anyway just know that it's it's it's a little bit different for people from different cultures and and girls young women to think about themselves as leaders because that's not our culture but so to to go go beyond that in your ask a real point um so the other thing um janice i'm wondering if you all just as a follow-up could send us like just a template of a the building safety plan just so we just sort of an idea of what is the checklist because this is going to be i think it's going to be very important to continue to emphasize what this audit is and what it isn't um but i think that will be easier to for people to conceptualize when we actually see um a building safety plan maybe as elementary middle and high just a sample yes thank you director bram edwards for that i and you did mention that it would be helpful if i did bring that to this meeting and i tried really hard to get something prepared for this meeting but i am not there yet but for a couple of people who i did kind of have a pre-audit committee check-in with i did kind of give them a sneak peek at my template that i was working on just to kind of give an idea of what it might look like and i am getting close so absolutely i will provide the template um to you guys just as soon as i get it prepared and i am working on that right now well yeah yeah no issues not to have it here just it will give us because as um there's more in-person learning um i think this this audit will be front and center for a number of people and it just would be good for us to know conceptually like what what is it that's being audited yep so let me go over this because this checklist so let me start on this so we are working to develop a generic checklist of items that we will be testing for when we're on site as well as a list of items that we may request while on site it is our intent to provide this checklist to the audit liaison along with the list of people who we come up with that needs to be included on that um and then once that's sent i'm hoping it's our hope that the they share the generic checklist with everyone who might be impacted by it so they can get a feel for what those questions might be what are we going to ask what are we going to want to look at and um it shouldn't be scary when we show up we don't want to show up and surprise anybody on site and just being an auditor by title is oftentimes intimidating and so to relieve some of that i just want to be very upfront and provide the checklist and so they will have an idea of what to expect and of course i will share that with you guys as soon as i have it developed i will say that there will be a disclosure on the checklist it is a generic checklist
00h 50m 00s
and questions may vary site to site and it's not like we won't ask anything else but there could be more questions but at least the generic checklist will give people an idea to help have a better understanding of what they can expect so the next bullet point here it is our intent to provide the audit liaison with notification of which buildings were planning to test the following week so for example tentatively right now what we're thinking is on wednesday of each week we will email out these are the buildings that we plan to get to at any point during the following week so we want to provide notice of which buildings could be visited during the next week i don't want to say exactly what day and what time it is that we will be there but i think it's important to say hey this week these are the list and at some point during the week you can anticipate that the auditors will show up so i'm just i'm curious about that so i'm going to be uh the skeptic right now so if um if the district is provided um the list of schools i can see that there could be um some concerns that hey if they know if they know the auditors are coming they'll get in compliance and why wouldn't you do um random visits versus scheduled ones this isn't meant to be oppositional it's just i know that's a question that community members will ask and that is an excellent question and i really um reached out some of my colleagues um other internal auditors to kind of see what they were thinking on this as well so the idea is um a week range is enough notice so people we don't want to surprise people like i'm just going to be honest i have showed up to do a cash count somewhere and the person literally cried um so it's very hard to be a complete surprise so if there was um and if a building did want to um you know put on a performance just for the time in which we'll be there well they're gonna have to maintain that performance for the entire week because they don't know which day we're gonna get there so if that's the intent that they would make um it perfect just for when the auditor gets there well they're gonna have to maintain that for the entire week and it's unlikely that um if it is truly just a performance for the behalf of the auditor that they would be able to maintain that for the course of the week so it's it is enough noticification notification so people can be prepared but it's not an exact notification so um there's still a little bit of an element surprise you don't know exactly what day of the week will be there and exactly what time of the day will be there so if there is an intent in intent to put on a performance just while it's gonna have to be maintained long term and i just really felt strongly we wanted to give notice and um i found i thought that that week made sense did that answer your question okay awesome so we are committed so this answers your initial your first question julia our director bram edwards says we are committed to providing the audit liaison um with the results of the on-site visit within two business days so within two business days of our on-site visit everybody who wants to be on the list that is part of the communication plan will get an email with the results of the visit um also a couple of the district administration said hey if you see anything significant text me before you leave call me before you leave and so i took their numbers and i will do that and also i would will do plan to go over the results verbally with the district um the building administrator uh at that building before i leave assuming they have time you know i don't want to be disruptive to anybody's schedule but i would provide that opportunity if they have time i will run through the
00h 55m 00s
results with them verbally before i leave if there's anything significant i will reach out to those who have asked me to reach out to them immediately before leaving and then they will also get the feedback um two days afterwards it just we just need to get back to our desks and really type it up and dial it in and get that sent out did that answer your question so we are planning to provide the audit committee with a summary of the testing completed to date at each audit committee meeting so in our april audit committee meeting i will bring um a a summary report of the testing that has been done so far to kind of say we visited this many buildings and you know a summary of what we found a couple of things i do plan to do is if we find any non-compliance we will do a repeat visit and i would like to repeat that visit before i come to the audit committee and that away if there was anything identified and when we go back for a repeat visit it's been fixed i can say we did identify these but upon a repeat visit they were taken care of um just to make sure that i'm providing the audit committee with an idea of um not leave you hanging as to well there was a little bit of non-compliance well i want to do that follow-up visit to say okay they've already fixed it does that make sense all right and so what the last piece about this that i do want to disclose is i would like to have um reserved the right to do those follow-up visits without any notification so they if there is non-compliance that is identified we won't include their building on the weekly list and we will show up completely unannounced to do the follow-up is that sound fair for everybody sounds like uh ruth reichel a restaurant critic for the new york times she used to show up and in costume um unannounced yeah but i think that i think that's really fair to give to give a full you know transparent notice and then if you i think was the marker that you found something significant or some things that are significant that weren't um a follow-up visit yeah and that way i can report out um that they fix the things if there was anything you know honestly i am anticipating so far everything that i'm seeing is really dialed in very organized so this could just be a breeze audit and hopefully there's nothing to identify but in the event that there is we will be communicating properly through the chain of people that need to be informed as well as following up on those and also being transparent about the process so may ask just one more question you might have said it already um you're gonna if you have significant findings the organization the building will know within two days and at that point after they've been notified some amount of time would pass in order to address those findings and then you would come back at some point unannounced exactly yeah i think that's great dressed in camo and with boots on to break the doors down and i do wear a lot of black so i will refrain from the camo but um black is kind of my color um but um claire did i say anything like our from the district administration perspective any questions or thoughts or concerns well i i really appreciate um the quick notice especially if you find something and you're notifying before you leave i think that's really important i mean the whole um reason for doing this is keeping our children our staff safe so i appreciate the attention to detail here thank you um okay well that is everything that i have for my agenda item so i'm going to stop sharing and um let julia take back over director backwards thank you so much uh julia is fine we're in committee uh at least for me it's more informal um thank you so much
01h 00m 00s
i know that that'll be a very important um sort of checkpoint in the system that a lot of people will be paying attention to so the last agenda item we have since there hasn't there's no public comment is the contract audit implementation scorecard and there's sort of two there's two pieces um that people should have they should have um scorecard and um also a um a memo from mary kane to the audit committee regarding this is an issue that i asked about at the last meeting uh claire do you have anything you want to cover in um i would like to share about the scorecard so there are two versions of the scorecard this was the december 2020 scorecard and not um as of you know the end of december so we reported that in january but there were some departments that hadn't completed their submission so you'll see one that has the full submission for december now um so you can see all of it but there's also one that's separate that is just the ones that changed so there's a shorter one that shows the changes um since we reported last month so everything um in it is on track and um or completed so we're we are um in good shape in terms of meeting the um timelines that have been um put through from the contracts audit in particular and a lot of the um parts that have been filled in um from last month mary kane actually came to the meeting and verbally responded it just wasn't put into the scorecard so a lot of it you actually did hear a specific report from her directly last month but at the same time i said last month that i would bring back um the updates to this month so that we could close it out and then of course our next um report for this would be for march 31st awesome and um our next audit committee meeting is isn't in march or april april 7th is okay calendar so it'll be after the um march 31st deadline do any committee members have any questions about the status update of the um the scorecard or activities that's happened since the last meeting just a clarification so the two scorecards are both updated as of december 2020 is that correct yes that's the end of the second quarter that's correct and just one um we were trying to make it easier but it's probably just caused confusion one gives the whole score card for december now so it shows it's complete but if you want to know what changed since last time you look at the shorter version and that's those are the changes to look at since the last time you received it so just in terms of um version control because we all may not be here um let's just say five years from now anyway for the for the record um if it's possible to just date stamp both of them so that we know which ones are which so you have one that is december and then it could be you know december version with revisions from february just so if somebody's not uh doesn't have somebody to verbally explain what the two are that we have at least date stamped on the document the difference any other questions um just one what's up with the tie that's for jackson i just say it's not for me and parker you better step up your game i know i it's so it's the one of the few uh committees i didn't put on at least a white shirt for i've i mean no i've seen parker in a time many times it's respectful you know what else are you gonna do yeah actually before the audit committee i was talking with janice i actually had an interview this morning to study abroad over the summer awesome congratulations i hope you get it yeah virtually you're going to be like zooming in with france or something like that um hopefully i'll be able to go to taiwan but we'll see awesome um i actually wanted just to
01h 05m 00s
mention i haven't sorry are we gonna move off the topic because i have a question about the memo and i know that i don't believe harry kane is here oh sorry that was on the memo also okay um so mary's not here but um i'm gonna just put these questions on the record and i'll follow up with mary separately but i want to put them into the record um so um there recently was a case with um this is about um it was about contractor training and one of the recommendations was all the contractors who have direct student who have student contact that they um go through this training and my question is that the universe was too large so we've narrowed it down recently there was a communication that went out to i think all of pps about an individual who had volunteered through mesd with some very concerning behavior and child pornography and i'm wondering if we've just since we have sort of a test case whether that would have using the filters we have here with that of individual have been um somebody who would be covered by the contractor training um so that that's one question does i and i guess i'm going to ask um so when you're doing a background check they have to have a a conviction on files so um [Music] the first time they're arrested for that we wouldn't have necessarily um had that record to check right yeah i guess um um yes and they had no records so we wouldn't there would have been no i guess i'm thinking he's like would this type of person um who would have had direct contact who had a background check does that mean they would have got the training or is it a further subset so what i think that i hear you wondering is if the contract that this person was working under had the training requirements in the contract and as a result that person would have been required to take the pps required training courses so that is something we can look into uh to see if that is the case yeah i'm just curious and this is a i know we had to we had to we narrowed the scope to make it manageable and i'm i'm just like pressure testing like do we get the right scope is it you know too narrow too or too wide so that was one question i noticed that we um in the memo that we talked about all of our resj community partners um we selected them given we know they have a lot of direct contact with students that they would have the training and i'm just curious um whether non-resj groups um and those cbo's would have the training like so where did what was in and what was out do we make some sort of judgmental call um like yes these cbos are in school like their people are in schools every day and these other ones it's like once a quarter and that's and we don't feel like they're ever unsupervised so just maybe just a little bit finer definition on [Music] how we scoped in which i'm not i'm not disagreeing with narrowing the scope to make it manageable and actually making it appropriately scoped i'm just wondering where that's scoping so you said that you were going to contact mary kane and bring something back is that what i heard at the beginning yeah i guess i'm putting i'm putting the questions on the record um and just giving you my background because um and i didn't flag for mary to be at this meeting so um i will follow up but i want to make sure that we just get the answers back into the record for the the committee meeting and yes i will ask her so my i just wanted my comment related to the memo was just to tie it back to the implementation
01h 10m 00s
um document so the recommendation was number seven so that recommendation which is um well in my printed copy i must have printed the copy that has that p number seven missing um so i don't have it off the top of my head but basically it was to update the board with the delays with the of the implementation related to contractor mandatory mandatory contractor training and so just fyi this memo is the response related to recommendation number seven so when you think about the things in combination with each other okay and i had a couple other questions more about that relate to their they're more related to the um the environment the virtual environment in which our students are operating right now um and i will ask those directly to marry kane but um i appreciate getting this for the record is there any any other questions about either the scorecard uh the contents um or the the contract audit or the memo that was in the uh in the documents for the committee um just a clarification uh do we pick up arrest records or convictions when we're doing that kind of a background check [Music] i don't have the answer but i i know that we follow the rules that we have in place but i can we can find that out i'll add that to um the list of questions i send to mary and julia when you do that you might also mention the raptor program because i know that the raptor program is something that volunteers or contractors can log into that's a little bit more of a real time check so i'm not sure what level of assurance that might but if you mention it it might prompt her to look into that also okay anything else um i just wanted to mention that in a couple of audit when we talked about this you had mentioned that you would compile the questions from different audit committees members and provide them to district administration so they could have an idea of what kind of questions to expect related to the implementation so jackson has given a list of questions and i afforded that along to claire and kind of prioritize them based off of a conversation with jackson and so hopefully that will give them an idea for next time what questions perhaps you know there's it's such a broad skill to get everybody to answer all the questions it would be a very large meeting so you know kind of grouping them together like okay well maybe this team might be able to answer these questions so it's just an idea right let's uh follow up on that in our planning for future meetings anything else okay i can't see everybody like shaking their head that they've got nothing else so i'm gonna take it i'm gonna take the affirmative that um all right um i want to thank uh this staff uh for the preparation of both the documents for the meeting and also the presentations and thank all the committee members who came prepared today to engage with the content and uh we'll wrap up 13 minutes early thank you for everyone bye


Sources

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sunshinepps.org/index.php?title=2021-02-24_PPS_School_Board_Audit_Committee_Meeting&oldid=10166"
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Center for Transparent Analysis and Policy
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki