Below is the email ” news flash” sent to all DeKalb employees from Superintendent Atkinson on November 5th.
Title I Audit Finds DCSD Must Repay Funds
In March 2012, the Georgia Department of Education conducted its annual
Cross-Functional Monitoring of the Title I Part A Program in DeKalb. Each
year, they take a random sampling of expenditures to audit Title I funds.
This year, they selected as one of their random samplings the Communities
In Schools (CIS) contract. The DeKalb County School District (DCSD) has
been under a contract with CIS since 2008 similar to other metro
districts. This year, they deemed that the CIS services provided in the
contract did not qualify as an allowable activity. As a result, the
district will be required to repay $885,000 from the general fund to
resolve the matter. Since the expenditure had not been cited in the past
four years, DCSD had no indication it was unallowable. The Title I
administration is undergoing restructuring this year to ensure more
streamlined accountability going forward.
In addition, there is $25,000 of additional expenditures related to
unallowable costs for Title I activities that are also required to be
repaid. As a result, the total amount of $910,000 must be repaid from the
general fund budget. The DCSD is working within the Finance department to
determine how the general fund budget must be modified since this
repayment expenditure was not planned for within this year’s budget.
