Ramapo Central School District Internal Controls Over Purchasing

Ramapo Central School District Internal Controls Over Purchasing - Executive Summary

Background

The Ramapo Central School District (District) is located in the Villages of Hillburn, Airmont, Montebello, Tallman, Suffern, Sloatsburg, and parts of Monsey and Wesley Hills along with a small unincorporated area of the Town of Ramapo, Rockland 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 seven schools in operation within the District with approximately 4,770 students and 650 employees. The District’s budgeted expenditures for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 fiscal years were $97.6 million and $105.2 million respectively, funded primarily with State aid, real property taxes, and grants.

The Board has designated the Superintendent as the District’s purchasing agent. Under the general supervision of the Superintendent, the Business Executive acts as the District’s purchasing agent and is responsible for administering the District’s purchasing activities. The Board’s adopted purchasing policy governs District purchasing and related activities.

Objective

The objective of our audit was to determine if the District has properly safeguarded District resources. Our audit addressed the following related question:

Are internal controls over purchasing appropriately designed and operating effectively to adequately safeguard District assets?

Scope and Methodololgy

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, and payroll and personal services. 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 purchasing area and, therefore, we examined internal controls over purchasing for the period July 1, 2005 to February 28, 2007.

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 and Corrective Action

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. District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.

Complete Audit in PDF