Background

The Victor Central School District (District) is located in the Towns of East Bloomfield, Farmington, Victor, Perinton, and Macedon. The Towns of East Bloomfield, Farmington and Victor are located in Ontario County, the Town of Perinton is located in Monroe County, and the Town of Macedon is located in Wayne 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 3,650 students and 870 employees. The District’s budgeted expenditures for the 2005-06 fiscal year were $43 million, funded primarily with State aid, real property taxes, and grants.

The District serves breakfast and lunch each school day. Approximately 275 students and 60 adults eat breakfast and approximately 2,500 students and 125 adults eat lunch daily. During the 2005-06 fiscal year the District’s cafeteria operation expenditures totaled $1.1 million.

Objective

The objective of our audit was to examine the District’s internal controls over procurement. Our audit addressed the following related question:

• Have District officials designed and implemented effective internal controls over procurement and competitive bidding to protect District assets against loss, waste and misuse, and are those controls 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 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. 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 some risk existed in the area of purchasing and, therefore, we examined internal controls over purchasing in accordance with competitive bidding requirements for the period July 1, 2005 to January 20, 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 Board has the responsibility to initiate corrective action. Pursuant to Section 35 of the General Municipal Law, Section 2116-a (3)(c) of the Education Law and Section 170.12 of the Regulations of the Commissioner of Education, the Board must approve a corrective action plan that addresses the findings in this report, forward the plan to our office within 90 days, forward a copy of the plan to the Commissioner of Education, and make the plan available for public review in the District Clerk’s office. For guidance in preparing the plan of action, the Board should refer to applicable sections in the publication issued by the Office of the State Comptroller entitled Local Government Management Guide.