This is one of several reports the OIG has issued on State and Territory use of Disaster Recovery funding. See our Disaster Recovery page for more information on work in this area.
The objectives of our audit were to determine whether the Texas Education Agency (Texas) established and implemented systems of internal control that ensured (1) displaced student count data provided to the U.S. Department of Education (Department) were accurate and complete, (2) Temporary Emergency Impact Aid for Displaced Students (EIA) program funds were appropriately allocated to local educational agencies (LEA), and (3) LEAs used EIA program funds in accordance with applicable Federal requirements.
Texas’s system of internal control over displaced student count data did not ensure that the data provided to the Department were accurate and complete because it did not always prevent or detect inaccurate displaced student counts reported by LEAs. Texas did not provide adequate guidance to LEAs, and a reasonableness check that it performed on displaced student count data was inadequate to prevent or detect potential errors in the data. In addition, Texas’s reasonableness check on displaced student count data submitted by the LEAs, which involved comparing counts between two data sources, was not designed in a way that would have provided assurance that reported data were accurate and complete. We estimate that $10.55 million of the $23.1 million in EIA program funds that the three LEAs received was not supported because of the inaccurate and incomplete displaced student count data.
We made seven recommendations, including that Texas (1) provide required support for or return $12.37 million in unsupported costs identified in this report; (2) review support for students reported as displaced by quarter for Spring and all other Texas LEAs with reported displaced student counts that matched previously reported data or that increased by quarter, and return funds related to unsupported displaced student counts; (3) return any EIA program funds allocated to any other LEAs that did not separately account for and properly use EIA program funds for the benefit of displaced students reported as students with disabilities; and (4) develop and implement procedures that include guidance for tracking student enrollment in the event of a disaster; collecting, documenting, and reporting data on displaced students; and monitoring the EIA program and any future emergency funding from the Department.
Data Quality and Reporting
Oversight and Monitoring—Grantees