Background

The Ballston Spa Central School District (District) is located in the Towns of Malta, Milton, Ballston and Charlton in Saratoga County. The District is governed by the Board of Education (Board) which comprises seven elected members. The Board is responsible for the general management and control of the District’s financial and educational affairs. The Superintendent of Schools (Superintendent) is the chief executive officer of the District and is responsible, along with other administrative staff, for the day-to-day management of the District under the direction of the Board.

There are five schools in operation within the District, with approximately 4,500 students and 700 employees. The District’s general fund expenditures for the 2005-06 fiscal year were $58.8 million, funded primarily with State aid, real property taxes and grants.

Objective

The objective of our audit was to determine if internal controls over payroll are appropriately designed and operating effectively to adequately safeguard district assets.

Scope and Methodology

During this audit we examined internal controls over payroll of the Ballston Spa Central School District for the period July 1, 2005 to December 31, 2006.

Our overall goal was to assess the adequacy of the internal controls put in place by officials to safeguard District assets. To accomplish this, we performed an initial assessment of the internal controls so that we could design our audit to focus on those areas most at risk. Our initial assessment included evaluations of the following areas: financial oversight, cash receipts and disbursements, purchasing, payroll and personal services and information technology. Based on that evaluation, we determined that controls appeared to be adequate and limited risk existed in most of the financial areas we reviewed. We did determine that risk existed in the payroll processing area and, therefore, we examined internal controls over payroll processing.

We conducted our audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards (GAGAS). More information on such standards and the methodology used in performing this audit are included in Appendix B of this report.

Comments of District Officials

The results of our audit and recommendations have been discussed with District officials and their comments, which appear in Appendix A, have been considered in preparing this report.