St. Johnsville Central School District Internal Controls Over Purchasing - Introduction

Background

The St. Johnsville Central School District (District) is located in the Towns of St. Johnsville, Palatine and Minden in Montgomery County, the Town of Ephratah in Fulton County, and the Towns of Danube and Manheim in Herkimer County. The District is governed by the Board of Education (Board) which comprises five 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 two schools in operation within the District, with 466 students and 94 employees as of June 30, 2006. The District’s actual expenditures for the 2005-06 fiscal year were $6.9 million, funded primarily with State aid, real property taxes, and grants.

Objective

The objective of our audit was to evaluate the internal controls over the District’s financial operations to ensure that District assets were properly safeguarded. Specifically, our audit addressed the following related question:

• Are internal controls over purchasing appropriately designed and operating effectively?

Scope and Methodology

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 the 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 purchasing area and, therefore, we examined internal controls over the purchasing process for the period July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006.

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.

Complete Audit in PDF