East Ramapo Central School District - Nonpublic School Transportation (2019M-107)

Issued Date
November 20, 2019

[read complete report - pdf]

Audit Objective

Determine whether the District is providing transportation to eligible nonpublic school students.

Key Findings

  • District officials did not have documentation that they were only paying for transportation for students that lived in the District. We requested documentation for 300 students. The documentation for 93 of these students was missing and we found deficiencies such as no proof of address for 54 of the 193 new students’ applications and no proof of birthdate for 15 students.
  • For 2017-18, the District paid 15 schools to use Yeshiva Private Contractors (YPCs) on a per-student basis to transport 717 (or $495,499) more students than were registered. For 2018-19, as of April 1, 2019, the District is paying 23 schools to transport 455 (or $337,085) more students than registered.

Key Recommendations

  • Obtain documentation to prove eligibility before providing transportation to nonpublic students.
  • Use the actual number of students, instead of estimates, to make payments for YPCs to transport students.

District officials generally agreed with our recommendations and indicated they planned to initiate corrective action. Appendix B includes our comment on an issue that was raised in the District’s response letter.