STAFFORD COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION

31 Stafford Avenue
Stafford, Virginia 22554

(540) 658-6629
Fax (540) 658-6041
News Release: #15-71
April 13, 2016

Contact:

W. Bruce Benson, Superintendent, 540-658-6000

Valerie Cottongim, Public Information Officer, 540-658-6629

Stafford County School Board Releases Audit Report that

Shows Irregularities in Budget Adjustments; Implements
Improved Budgeting Practices
The Stafford County School Board has released findings from an interim forensic
financial audit report for Fiscal Year 2013 (FY13) that outlines irregularities in how
the school system processed budget adjustments. In addition, the School Board
authorized counsel to continue the audit by completing the review of FY13 and to
prepare an additional audit report for Fiscal Year 2014. The report identifies a
number of concerning budget and budget adjustment practices in FY13, including a
large number of budget adjustments impacting a significant number of accounts,
inaccurate quarterly reports, redirection of funds in personnel and benefit lines, and
failure to reconcile budgeted amounts with actual expenditures.
Our commitment is to improve transparency with our community and ensure their
trust in us to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, said School Board Chair Holly
H. Hazard. We welcome the continued scrutiny to provide any additional
information that may be helpful to improve our budgeting practices.
This was an unfortunate situation that we immediately began to investigate once
we learned of the irregularity at the end of June 2015 when our fiscal year ended,
said Superintendent W. Bruce Benson. This report confirms our early findings that
something was not quite right with how we had been processing budget
adjustments, so we took proactive steps to put in tighter controls around our budget
and financial processes even before we received this reports findings.
The following improvements were implemented during the past nine months:
1. Converted budget development spreadsheets from Lotus to Excel to ensure
data control, integrity and security;
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2. Realigned responsibilities for accounting, budget, grants, payroll and

purchasing functions to ensure multi-point review;
3. Increased detail, timeliness and utility of monthly and quarterly financial
statements and issued them on a timely basis;
4. Reconciled and analyzed funds received and unspent (payroll and nonpayroll) at fiscal year-end (FY15);
5. Reduced budget amendment/transfer review and approval process threshold
from $20,000 to $10,000;
6. Implemented quarterly review of contracted positions and calculation of
contracted salary and benefits lapse;
7. Built FY17 Budget baseline using template developed for calculation of
contracted salary and benefits lapse;
8. Implemented a 3-year actual trend analysis to identify expenditure savings
and revenue growth opportunities; and,
9. Implemented additional internal controls and standard operating procedures
for budget amendment/transfer processing.
I believe that these corrective actions taken to date significantly improve the utility,
accuracy and oversight of our budget development and management processes,
said Benson.
The interim report is available through the School Board office by emailing
publicinformation@staffordschools.net or calling 540-658-6000 ext. 308.

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