Superintendent Responds To Audit Report

By Stephanie Petrellese

Superintendent Dr. Robert Feirsen commented on a recently released audit report from the New York State Comptroller's Office at the July 7th meeting of the Garden City Board of Education.

The comptroller's office cited 18 recommendations in the report, a number Dr. Feirsen said was "not unusual." District administrators were in the process of implementing many of the items while the audit was taking place from July 1, 2006 through Nov. 30, 2007. "We're delighted to say that all 18 have been addressed already," he said. Examples Dr. Feirsen cited include implementing a disaster recovery plan and tightening controls in the district's business office.

Dr. Feirsen's remarks mostly centered on the two criticisms he felt were unfair. "Two areas I want to focus on we are a little bit perturbed about," he said.

The district was one of 250 school districts in the state cited by the comptroller's office for improperly establishing Employee Benefit Accrued Liability Reserve funds. The funds should be used to cover compensated absences only, and should not be used to cover post-employment benefits.

"We're a little bit miffed frankly because it was done under good advice and I feel personally that the office of the state comptroller knew this was going on on a large scale," Dr. Feirsen said. "It would have been better to issue an advisory...rather than waiting for audits and then criticizing districts for doing it."

The district has issued a press release, which can be found in this issue of the Garden City News and on the home page of the district's Web site, which goes into more detail about how and why the problem occurred. Links to the comptroller's audit report can also be found on the home page of the Garden City School District's Web site, www.gardencity.k12.ny.us/.

"Bottom line is, if the comptroller says we should do it a different way, we'll do it a different way," he said.

The other recommendation Dr. Feirsen took issue with was the determination by the comptroller's office's division of local government and school accountability that the Garden City Board of Education was unaware of salaries and benefits of those employees who are appointed to their positions. This would include eight administrators and five employees in the technology department who are not in bargaining units.

"The District did not include the annual salaries paid to eight administrators and five technology specialists, totaling $1.6 million, in the Board minutes made available for audit and posted on the District's web site for the general public," the audit report claims.

Dr. Feirsen said the district contested this during the exit interviews conducted with the auditors. He said the salaries and benefits were included in the back-up information provided in the packets that every board trustee receives prior to a meeting and which is also included in the minutes. "The board knew, and the community knew."

"We feel that was unfair to the Board," Dr. Feirsen said. "It makes the Board look like it was not doing what it was charged by the community to do and makes it seem as if there were somehow secrets in the minutes that we had, which was certainly not the case....We recognize that the comptroller's office has the last say on such matters, but we are upset with the way it was portrayed."

The comptroller's office contends that they did not receive the back-up information which included salaries and benefits. "While the District asserts that the public always had full knowledge of the compensation to be provided to all employees, we were not provided with evidence of this during the course of our audit. The Board minutes presented to us for audit (certified by the District Clerk as the official Board minutes), and the minutes listed on the District's website, did not contain the salaries of the 14 employees indicated in our report and did not include any attachments that showed these salaries.

"It was not until the exit conference, one year after our fieldwork had ended, that the District provided us with Board minutes containing attachments indicating Board authorization for these salaries. In order to ensure accountability and transparency to the public, evidence of Board-authorized employees' salaries should be readily available for review by the general public."