Okay. The 01/05/2026 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board Audit Committee will now come to order. Happy New Year, everyone. Great to be here with you, and we do have quorum. So we will now move to approve the meeting minutes from the 11/17/2025, audit committee meeting. Do I have a motion? I so move. Thanks. And that motion reads that the audit committee approve the minutes, from the 11/17/2025 meeting with leave for the clerk to correct any formatting, technical, or grammatical errors. Do I have a second?
Second by, miss Saint John Cunning. All those in favor, unanimous for those at the table. So next, we have, item 1.03, which is the f y twenty twenty five office of auditor general annual report. So now I call on general Koh, and deputy general, Danielle Moore for item 1.03. Thank you, Ryan. And, good afternoon, everyone, and happy New Year. Welcome to the, first of the year audit committee meeting.
And, today, we have a pretty brief agenda, so we are very happy to be able to spotlight our accomplishment and achievement for the past fiscal year. So, with that, first of all, I would like to thank all the audit committee members and the chairs for the continued support for the OAG work. And I also want to express my appreciation to all the OAG members. As you all know, we try to bring the full team each time for the audit committee meetings so that you can see kind of who is actually working behind
of all the audit reports. And we have worked very hard to complete our audits, inquiries and all the training programs. It truly takes a team effort to accomplish the task that delegated to us by the school board and the audit committee. And, also, I would like to, give a thank you to our hourly auditor, Mukta, and he cannot be with us today. But he is one of the, primary authors of the annual report. So I would like to, give him the, you know, thank you for that. And, logistically, after today's presentation, this annual report will be presented to the school board,
on June 23. So it's a little bit later, and it is because that that the, the chairs would like to combine the annual report discussion together with the fiscal '27 audit topics discussion. So, it will be around that time. And we can talk more if that time it needs to be adjusted or what. So for today, within this, any report, we highlight our accomplishments over the past year over mainly our four pillars of work.
That's how we normally call them. The first one is, listed on the transmittal letter. And thank you, Claude, if you can just stay at the yes. That will be great. So the first area is risk assessment. Risk assessment a is how we identify and select audit topics. The second pillar is internal audit, meaning our core function, the bread and butter, or in the Asian way, I will call it rice and noodle. So what we mainly do for the comfort food, I mean, for the, for the main thing for internal audit.
And then the c area is fraud, waste, and abuse hotline. So here is ensuring all the when things will not quite go the right way such as when there are concerns for misuse of funds, stakeholders have a tip line to raise that concern to OAG, office of auditor general. We also do a lot of outreach and education work as well. So, because we know even though, OAG has been doing a lot of excellent work, but if we do not communicate it actively with our staff or community, it means
that we have not done that. So together, these four pillars create a holistic approach for, my office to review FCPS processes for effectiveness, efficiency, and to ensure accountability to all the Fairfax County community members. And for those of you who are watching this meeting this afternoon, the office of Auditor General reports directly to the school board and I'm on, going to page one of this report as well as the audit committee. As many of you know that that independence is really, essential for the success of
the office. So page one of this report highlight that, we report to the school board via the audit committee who is the, meeting today. And then, on this page, we also highlight the audit committee charter according to the governance manual. And pages two and three of this report continue to outline the policy one one zero five, which is the Auditor General Authority. And it again emphasized the importance of independence as well as, on this page, under
item e, it talks about audit standard and ethics. So for audit standard, we follow the, government, the government, accountability office. They publish the, I bring this with me, the government auditing standard and we call this as the yellow book. And to me, sometime a physical copy always tell a little bit more. And this is the standard that the federal agency follow as well as many fed many state and local audit organizations follow as well.
So OAG follow the standard. And then moving on on page four, it talks more about our mission. And I have already outlined that in the beginning is that our office is to conduct independent assessment on all the ongoing FCPS processes and to ensure that they are working effectively, efficiently, and be accountable to our community members. And then on this page, we outline many of the OAG value that we, measure
our success against. So if we can go down a little bit more. So there's a table, here where we were able to get some of the benchmarking from the Council of Great City Schools. And the data that we got is quite recent is as of 2024 to '25. So when you looked at the different indicators here, you can see that that OAG operate is at a more effective and efficient, level compared to generally the other school districts. And then also we are very glad to report that that we were able to
complete a 100% of our audit plan, and then we were able to, have management accepted a 100% of the recommendations. So here, I would like to highlight, as I mentioned, we are independent, but at the same time, we have a very collaborative approach working with management. So we are very grateful that the recommendations were fully accepted. So, moving on on the page five in the beginning, we also conducted, survey after each audit with our audit clients, meaning with management.
We ask questions based upon the eight different areas that as you can see on the screen, Such as if it is timely being, announced about the audit is coming up, do we have an effective process? Do you believe that the auditors contain sufficient knowledge? So we aim at getting a higher than 90% of yes to these questions. And in fiscal year twenty five, we exceeded that, that, that indicator to receive more than 90% on all the, indicators that we try to measure.
And then moving on, we have some other, OAG achievements on our report cards as well. And here, there are a lot of wording here. We will go through each one of them, in a more details in a little bit. But for here, I just want to highlight two things, in the meantime. One is that every three years, OAG will also be audited. So, as a matter of fact, later this month, we will have an external peer review team coming to look at how OAG is doing our audit according to the
government auditing standard. So we will be, presenting the result in the next audit committee meeting in March. And then I also want to highlight that that all the, our team members cons is have direct they're require certifications in doing what we do. We have certified public accountants. We have certified internal auditor, fraud examiner, as well as information system auditors. Even though it sounds like a lot of alphabets, but I really want to highlight that because it added the credentials to what we do so that that the community
members can rely on our report. So moving on to page six is a little bit more to talk about the nuts and bolts. So first pillar of the work is the risk assessment, how we identify audit topics. So we identify audit topics through a very extensive process including looking at the financial number, looking at the operational risk and challenges, what are the internal controls, checks, and balances that are in place, etcetera. And we also, listen, you know, to all the school board and also the school
board meetings and then the, work sessions. We take notes about the hot topics with the school board as well as we looked at the other k twelve organization as well to see what are the common audit topics that they are looking at. And then if I can put a plug here that we are right now in the process of collecting feedback from school board members and audit committee members for fiscal year twenty seven audit topics. So your feedback is, critical to it. And on this page, if we can go down a little bit more, it also
indicated the fiscal year twenty six audit plan. So this is the plan that we are currently doing. And I want to say that that all the audits are processing on time. So moving on after risk assessment, that will be the second pillar of work is internal audit. So internal audit, we follow the same process every time. We started with risk assessment with and then we go on for planning. We have execution, meaning our field work. Reporting, meaning we bring the report back to the audit committee, and then maybe bringing that to the school board based upon the different types of audits.
And then we will also do the follow-up. Today, we will have Armonia presented our follow-up status in a little bit after this topic so that we have a full loop cycle. I mean, not just identify the audit findings, but also have a way to follow-up with management to ensure that all the recommendations are complete and timely. And then moving on to page eight, here is the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline. And we are grateful for OAG to manage the fraud, waste, and abuse hotline on behalf of FCPS.
So as part of our holistic approach, we conduct, you know, audits while we we conduct regular internal audits, but we also receiving leads or some kind of, like, information or tips through the hotline about what are the some of the concern or areas that we should focus more on. Last year alone, if we can scroll a little bit more down, for '25 fiscal year '25, we received close to 70 cases. And then you can see the trend from 21 to 25. And then on the side, it can it will also show you the types of
cases that we received. We received the cases such as fender related, how we carrying out a contract, how we use our assets. We also get situation about residency, procurement, etcetera. So you can see that that there is an upward trend from '21 to '25 that we have been getting more cases. We saw a spike in '24. We believe that this trend reflects, increased awareness and comfort among employees and community members in reporting concerns.
So for '24 and '25, you may ask me, hey, Esther, I saw like a decrease in '25. What does it really mean to us? So my, my response would be that if we take the not related to fraud, waste, and abuse cases out, which is the gray bar in the middle, like the '21 and the 13 cases, then the cases number are very, comparable. Then we will be getting, like, 58 cases in '24 and then 55 cases in '25.
So and again, at the audit committee, I want to thank all of you who have, you know, shared the hotline information in your newsletters or community communications. And we, as a office, we also conducted extensive outreach to promote the hotline and online submission too as well. So I wanna take this opportunity to promote again. And if I can go down a little bit more down to the report, there is an orange orange banner called out where it include our hotline number, our email, and also the online submission form too.
While we were not able to get, like, a fraud, you know, f r a u d and then the corresponding numbers on the phone, but I think that our numbers are quite easy to remember, 423-1333. So we just hope that more people can use this hotline to offer tips to us. So with that, I'm gonna go through the last pillar of the work, which is the outreach and education. So we have been very active in this area and I would like to highlight a few efforts. First is the audit bus. So and I know that many of you are excited to read our newsletters which
we produce on a monthly basis And, want to give a big kudos to our deputy auditor, miss Danelle Moore, because she's our major author and also to the rest of the team too. We many time, we try to write article that a, everyone, like, community members could easily understand. So we can see that our subscribe subscriptions now is over 4,000. But as an auditor, you know, it's not just a subscriptions, but actually who is opening the emails. So we have another, statistics which is right in front of you, the graph.
It's the number of Audible newsletter emails that were opened. So we see an upward trend, to almost, you know, a thousand subscribers have opened our email. So it is a great things to celebrate. And then moving on, we also have other, other initiative like today, the annual report, our website. And if we can move on to the training and education session and if we can pause here a little bit, that we have been very active in providing training and over a thousand employees and external audit professionals have received our training.
And also here, I would like to to really thank, doctor Reid who allowed us to be able to present at the leadership kickoff to have this opportunity to talk to our school based administrator on a yearly basis. And then I also want to thank our comptroller, miss Seymour, and then she always give us opportunity to present at the p two p so that we can have, on a yearly basis, have an opportunity to talk to the finance technicians and the finance assistants, which is really important. So thank you. And then, we continue to provide certified continuing professional education credits through the NASPA, mechanism.
It's the National Association of State Board of of Accountancy. Something is not noted on the report. So today, I try go on to the NASPA website. They have over 2,000 sponsors. And out of the 2,000 sponsor, FCPS is the only k 12 education organization that is listed. So I really think that is a great accomplishment. So what this, certification allowed us to do, we are on page nine. And this certification allowed us to do is to provide free education credits to all
the FCPS employees, especially if they have certain certification in the financial areas, then we can provide them with the certified training credits. And this is especially important when we have tight budget. And for all the committee members, you are welcome to join our training too. If I can do a quick promotion here, we have one starting on Friday morning with our, Michelle Pratt, procurement director and then we will be co presenting to share more about procurement with our staff members.
So moving on, and then we also host a DMV auditor group where we are, having, like, more than 20 local government auditors in DC, Maryland, and Virginia where we exchange ideas and information. And we are meeting tomorrow where we have invited the GAO, the author of the yellow book to come to speak with us. So we are very proud of all this accomplishment. Last but not the least, we have the internal audit awareness month. And if I can do a quick promotion here, it will be in May.
And this year, we will be meeting on May 13 and I would like to invite all of you to join us where we try, you know, to, through some entertaining or or some interesting way to share more about artists with our staff members. So with that sorry. I have talked a lot. And now I would like to hand the time over to more to Danelle to just talk very briefly about internal audits. Thank you, Esther. I will be providing you all with a summary of the audit results for my FY '25 audits. If you refer to page, 11 in the annual report, this provides a matrix of
all of the high, moderate, and low findings for each one of these audits. And you will note that we completed six performance audits and 14 business process audits. As it relates to the six performance audits, the first audit is the procurement process audit. So the scope of this audit covered procurement processes administered by the Office of Procurement Services and the vendor review process, administered in collaboration with the Office of Cybersecurity as well as the Technology Architecture and Assessment section. Some of the findings from this audit include, unalignment of policies, regulations, and guidance regarding
the vendor approval process, operational inefficiencies in vendor communication, and review processes, that impact the vendor solicitation, excuse me, and lack of key performance indicators. Our second audit is the student disciplinary process audit and this audit actually was exempt from disclosure, so we won't discuss, those results in the open session. The third audit was is the critical process review and this is for hiring. So, during this audit, we did an evaluation of the key hiring processes. Some of the challenges noted included the design of the hiring and onboarding processes that
may lead to inconsistent application of hiring practices, loss of interest from applicants and data silos that disrupt workflows. Our fourth audit is the construction and renovate and renovation contracting process audit. So the scope of this audit included the FCPS capital improvement program projects that were funded, for construction in the 2019, the 2021, and the 2023 bond referendums. We also looked at key processes and controls related to the procurement, contract monitoring, change
orders, contract invoicing, and contract closeout. Some of the findings noted included, instances of noncompliance with project contract terms and the, design and construction manual. And there were several areas where improvements could be made in the FCPS con, construction monitoring practices, policies, and guidelines that required an update. For our next set of audit, these audits are mainly our audits that are school related. Since, you know, we are a school division, that's our, kind of, our bread and butter. We have three different types of school related audits.
Those include the local school activity funds audit, continuous monitoring, and our business process audits. So, in FY twenty five, five, we can we completed the local school activity funds audit for year ending 06/30/2025. And, I'd like to note that this audit is one of those audits that are required by the Virginia Code. So, we look at this we do this audit every year. So, local school activity funds are collected from students and parents and they're to be used for the purpose in which they were collected. So this includes student fees, activity fees, and maybe something like parking fees.
During our audit, OAG did not have any findings, but we did have three observations related to compliance. First observation was related to compliance with, regulations. The second observation was related to cash receipts and internal control environment. And the third up ops object observation, excuse me, was related to the deposit date control weakness related to the Great Plains accounting system. So, basically, overall, out of this audit, we had a we we audited a total of 202 sites. We noted exceptions of non compliance with regulations in 73 sites and then we had
no exceptions at the remaining a 129 sites. And I would like to note the individual exceptions, occurred at the site level did not impact the cash balance at the year end. And there were no material effect to FCPS as a division. Our other, audit we conducted was the continuous monitoring. This is we do, quarterly reviews, of unusual transactions for both appropriated and local school activity funds transactions. The local school activity fund transactions, any exceptions noted will be included in our local
school activities funds, audit. So it's kinda like our what we use as our sample for local school activity funds. As well as any appropriated transactions or, exceptions that we know that we use that to determine if we need to conduct a business process review audit. So as far as the continuous monitoring for, f y twenty five, out of the 202 sites, a 103 sites had no exceptions noted. 55 sites had exceptions noted in three or fewer areas. 44 sites did not have any transactions that appeared in our sample.
And, and I would also like to note that OAG did quarterly site visits at 68 sites. And our last, set of audits are our business process audits. We conducted 14 business process audits in FY '25 which included 13 schools and one department. So, the business process audits are a deep deeper dive. These are ad hoc audits that are a deeper dive. We usually conduct these audits due to change in management, like the finance tech or the principal. Also, based on the outcome of any continuous monitoring, and other necessaries in other, areas
that are deemed necessary. Mainly the findings related to the business process audits are the purchasing process, timeliness of payments, also the timeliness of completing bank reconciliations and the non bank reconciliations which may be your your FMR, your financial management report. Also, we have findings related to outstanding deposits and the sufficiency of documentation. And I would like to note that for these audits, we we require, management response for any risk level moderate or higher.
So that would be a moderate or high responding. And we do follow-up on those in a court in a quarterly basis. As well as, we we follow-up on all of the findings for our performance audits, which, like I mentioned, is done on a quarterly basis and we report out to the audit committee. And, Mornia, we'll be talking a little bit later about that. But as of for FY '25, OAG did note that we had 45 new recommendations, excuse me, For the audit performed and reported 30 of those recommendations closed. And, as of July 31, 29 recommendations from the current and prior years remain outstanding.
And so, some of those outstanding, recommendations were related to the f y twenty five food and nutritional services audit, the f y twenty, excuse me, f y twenty four food and nutrition services audit, the f y twenty five procurement process audit, f y twenty five critical process review for hiring and the f y twenty five construction and renovation contracting process audit. And and, as I mentioned, Moyna will be giving an update of those items as of October 31. And then if we could refer to the appendix page, I would like to provide
you guys this is just a little handy dandy place where you can go and find important information about our office So that we have links provided that can link you to all of those different areas. So now, I would like to time hand the time back to Brian. Wonderful. Well, thank you both for that very thorough report. So first, I'll turn it over to colleagues if you have any questions or comments. Mr. Moon? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Happy New Year and thanks for the presentation. I had a few questions. Some Some of the questions may be very trivial, but that's that's basically based upon
out of my ignorance, so please forgive me. So so usually, when you present annual report, timeline wise, is that is that usually January of the following calendar year? Is that like, a January 2026 for something that ended on June 30 of the prior year is basically this May may I answer one by one? Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you for the question, mister Moon. So, yes, this is the stand and let me just explain a little bit if
I may. It may sound a little bit late because the cutoff should be on June and why we present in January of the following year. It is mainly because of one of the audit, which is the local school activity fund audit. Normally, we can only concluded that in November. Because that audit, we need to look at the year end balance for June 30. So it only occur afterwards. It it makes sense. So we normally would like to kind of summarize all the results in one time. In the past, we did, percent in December and or January.
This year is just because we, try to make it more efficient with the meetings. We meet every other month. So that's why we do it in January, if it makes sense. Yeah. Okay. I thought, you know, looking at just a set, doing it six months after the end of the fiscal year, you know, you know, to, general public might seem a little delay might have been involved. You know, that could be the impression to people. And especially, if I I understood you correctly, this presentation to the entire Board is
not going to occur until June year, which is almost a year after the end of the fiscal year. I guess, question should go to perhaps to our Chairman of the Board. With that in mind, you think by the time this gets presented to the full board, some of the information conveyed included in the report as of a certain date. Do you think that those will be updated? Some of for example, like, these are numbers as of October 31. Would that be updated if this is not gonna be presented to the board on
June? Do that. Definitely, mister Moon. And I think we, when we present to the board in June, we would also like to focus on our risk assessment effort for fiscal year twenty seven topics. So I think it will provide a very, like, an insightful if we can update some of the numbers to really support why we select the topics. Right? Because like I mentioned, at the end of the day, we want to provide a holistic approach. So we can certainly update some of the relevant information so that the board can make a more informed decision to decide what fiscal year twenty seven audit topics to
focus on. So we can certainly do that. Okay. And and and I don't wanna sound too nitpicking, but, I'm gonna be nitpicking on this one. On page five, you said yes to yes to responses to yes to responses higher than 90% for all different eight eight different categories. Higher than does not include equal to. Correct? Yes. So okay. I think that's I got it. So next time, I should say equal or higher than 90%.
Yeah. Got it. Thank you. We will actually correct that. We can just update that. Thank you. And and and also, on page four, I I have to ask these questions because, I'm glad to see 100% of completion of audit plan. Great. Congratulations. And 100% of recommendations being accepted by management. That's great. But my question go to this. When there is a a difference between a council of grade city schools for percentage
of completion, 70% versus 100%. That's a huge discrepancy. So we are doing far better than far better than, average of a council of great city schools. A question that's begging is, could they have given you more to do? I mean, that's that's the question coming to me. You are able to complete 100% of all because the workload was light.
Mhmm. It's a very unfair very unfair because you all work hard and you got this done and and accolades, compliments go to that. But, again, as as a policymaker, whether when I see that huge difference between average for that versus how we perform as a could he again, could he have given should he have given you more? Great question. And it's always as OAG, we always aim as effectiveness and efficiency.
Right? Because if we don't have that, how could we audit the other processes? So this is a a great question. And I I don't really know what prevents the other k 12 organization to be not able to meet a 100%, and you really give me a very good homework to go back to the great council of great city schools and to understand a little bit more about what what drive at the 70%. But we also do a lot of benchmarking.
Right? Like, through the risk assessment process, we actually looked at how and what types of audits the other k twelve organization that they complete because they do publish their audit plans. They may not publish their audit reports as transparent as maybe because of the state requirements, etcetera. But when we looked at the audit plan, we are very comparable in in terms of the workload with the other k twelve organizations. And some, I can tell you, because I did go to audit the other internal
audit office through the peer review program. Some of them, they may still be just focusing on school audits. Some, not all. Right? And, of course, there are some that that they are very above and beyond too, right, to look at a lot of the processes. But at the same time, they have a much bigger shops than OAG here. So I think, again, for me, the takeaway is that I will go back and find out what are the major reason for the other school that who self reported, they said they only met 70%.
And why we can meet at a 100%? Is it because we don't have enough we can assault more work for the district or because some issues that the other audit shops have and we don't have? And I can bring it back after I find out more. Okay. Thank you. But thank you. I'm I'm asking you the question, along with my congratulations and compliments to the fact that you've been able to accomplish everything that the school board has directed your office to accomplish. But when I also, at the same time, see year after year, it's a 100%.
Great, but also begs a question whether we should have, could have given you more. And that same thing goes to the next line, which is, maybe there isn't much a difference between 98100%. But when you have 100% year after year, our management accept all your recommendations. Are they accepting your recommendations because your your recommendations are all fair, reasonable, excellent, and
should accept? Or maybe this goes to a doctor really as well, is your recommendations are so easy to do. There's nothing tough, nothing challenging, so we'll just accept them. May I comment? And then I also would like to defer to management if they would also, you know, share their inputs as well. So from my perspective, and again, this is a great question. Right? Why? I think, normally speaking, we really strive at a 100%, mister We try to make
long lasting change to a system. Right? So you have to be collaborative. And for OAG, we are very cautious to make recommendations that at the risk level. So for example, if we see something is not working, like the regulations and policy, they haven't been updated with the actual, reality on the ground. Then we would say, hey. The the policy and regulations need to be updated. We try to make it high level so management can have flexibility to think about
how to really remediate the risk. So we don't really say management, you have to do a, b, c, d, e, f, g. Like, very plain like, you you can only do this in order to remediate the risk because there are many different ways, right, to able to achieve the same goal. So we try to give flexibility to management so that that they can also meet remediate the risk or challenges, but they have more flexibility about how to do it. And that's how we kind of like on the same I mean, I don't know
if, Danelle, you have more to add. But at the same time, I want to say when you looked at our neighboring district, they also get 98%. So I really believe that in the industry, this is the same methodology that we have been using. And I don't know if anyone other maybe our community members, since you may be working with auditors too, kind of do you have any thoughts on that? But that's my my thinking too, what's that question. Cut that. Yeah. No. I would just wanted to add, like, during the audit process, we try to be collaborative with management to make sure that we are recommending things that are feasible that
can be that can be done. So that is like a collaborative process to work with management. These are our findings and what recommendations needs to be implemented. But like Esther mentioned, we don't really get to the specifics. It's more at a at a general level. You know, I don't I don't wanna leave you know, I don't wanna put a words into your mouth, but, hopefully, you're not saying that you are only giving them what they can do. No. Not only giving them what they can do, but we're working through the process to make sure that what we're recommend mending it what we're recommend mending is feasible to
be done. Okay. Let me ask you this question, because I'll just get it out, to share with you a a you know, having a good collaborative working relations is one thing. Great. But do you also believe in healthy tension between OAG and management? Do you mind to, what intention again? Sorry. Healthy tension between Healthy in for healthy yes. Yes. Yes. Tension between OAG. Thank you.
Sorry about that. Management. We, Are they are they are they go ahead. I just don't lost. Don't worry. We have some management here, and I would encourage them. They can also share their thoughts too. But I do believe there are a lot of healthy discussion throughout the audience. Discussion. A lot of that if what we try to do, right, again, the goal for internal audit, that particular pillar of work, mister Moon, is we want to be able
to make recommendations to management and then can make a long lasting impact to the process. That's the main goal. Right? So we at the same time, we know that there are restrictions too. Right? Because of the budget or people, we know that that we try to operate as best as we can. So when we make recommendations, again, we are very aligned with industry. A 10098% is we want to be able to make recommendations that is helpful, but at the same time, we are independent. And I think maybe that's kind of the point that we we we need to
make sure, and we are not trying to make a recommendation just for the sake of management we accept. That's never is the intention, and we would never do that because that's totally against the yellow book. So I just want to make sure that that is for the record. And I don't know if management wants to add anything or is it on in line with what you think. I think, there's nothing we would add to that. Thank you. One last question. I think that this is something that I had asked previously, but I I wanna ask again on page number eight, we see these numbers, you know, over the years.
How do board members determine any trend, any numbers is a good number? You you said, oh, numbers going up because perhaps people are feeling more comfortable in reporting potential abuses waste to your office. Or it could be there might have been more and more of it more and more abuse and waste incidences incidents, and that is why they are being reported.
So as a policymaker, as a school board member, how do I know whether these numbers mean anything? What what tools could I use as the audit committee member, what's good member to see? Gosh, we simply be having problems here. And thank you for the question because I I kind of ex anticipate that it may be a question. So within the report, we actually try to address that, mister Moon and the audit committee members. So if the clerk can go a little bit, down, just, I we include a
two paragraph. Yeah. Here is good. Under the graph. Right? So we want to kind of have the message our messaging to you all is this. The office cannot control the volume, right, and the types of cases that we receive because it's like a it's not a crystal ball. Why don't I say that? The more, the better. Right? Because we always want to find all the needle in the haystack if possible instead of we just try to find them. It's impossible. But at the same time, we maintains a holistic program. We have the numbers, and we really think that we need to report it because
we want you all to know about the case load so that you know how we spend the time. But in terms of what a good number or numbers to celebrate or numbers too low and it can be higher, I could not give a conclusive answers. And I just wanna be honest about that to you all. I I I cannot say what number is good or bad. But before this meeting, I did do a lot of, Internet search in the public space and talked to my fellow internal auditors or yeah. In the local local government, space, that only very minimum number they do publicize it
in the public domain. And one is actually in Virginia and then they the cases number that they got is 60 for the whole city. And and again, it's just one data point and I'm not saying that that this is what we should be relied upon, But based upon what I say and based upon my verbal conversation with the other auto shop, I do believe that we have a very healthy system. I do not believe that it is an indicator that FCPS is having more challenges because of the upticks.
I see this as we have been doing a lot of outreach to our community members and also to our staff members, especially staff members quarterly training. And every time we have opportunities is to let them know that, hey. This is something available for you. You are our eyes and ears. I we would really encourage you to come up before a problem become a problem. So, and I apologize, mister Moon. I could not give you, you know, the full extent of explanation, but this is what we think. I would love to have an offline discussion about this sometime.
With that, on January 9, the presentation and training you will refer to, what time is that? It is, from 9AM to 12PM, and we have, right now, we have a 100 almost a 150 employee sign up. Okay. Option is an option. It's in person or virtual? Virtual. Oh, virtual. You know, the board man board we have a board meeting the night before, which may go until 2AM. So you I'm sorry. I should check this before. Yeah. If you don't see any scoop of the member, that's the reason. Okay. So next next time. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry about the scheduling, but I will bear that in mind.
Thank you. K. Miss St. Johnkani? So first of all, thank you for all the work that you've done and for this report. I'm just gonna piggyback on the, numbers of, reported, incidents that you guys are getting to the fraud, waste, and abuse line, and and I'm glad to see that there's an increase. Just just to ask you, like, do you see any specific trends on something that we should really be focusing on that that is coming in? And then the other question I'm going to ask you, because there is a large
number, that gray bar is very large, about not related to fraud, waste, and abuse. And if you could give us some examples of what those might be and how they are treated. So, something comes in that is not related to fraud, waste, and abuse and say that I am a person that makes that complaint and you're not gonna investigate it, then how how is that handled? I'm just trying to figure out how the general public if this is coming in from a parent, you know. And thank you, Marcia, for the questions.
And, so in terms of how like, the numbers, like I explained, I do believe that this is a very healthy, you know, trend that we really try to publicize this method. And for the not related to fraud, waste, and bills, when we got those cases, I will give some examples in a little bit. But when we got those situation, we really do try our best to refer the claimants through the right media, and one of which we use very often is the
office of OMBAS. Or if they ask some, you know, policy or regulations related questions, we would try to refer them to the right departments or offices. Some of the questions, if I may mention, some of them are maybe students related, student, like, generally speaking related and has no impact on fraud, waste, and abuse. And and some some of them is totally irrelevant, but we do take lock off that. And some of them, they may mention, oh, claim about administration or the board have
not been timely reporting to email, and then people will start using very strong terms and which is not the case. We we all know that. And some of them are related, like, let's say, student disciplinary record and has nothing, you know, to with what we do. And and and some of them, like, let me just maybe raise one more. Yeah. I think that's good. I think that gives everybody a good, idea and I think that for reporting purposes, to give you guys the credit, because when you say it's not related to fraud,
waste, and abuse the way you have it up there, it looks like it's just kind of brushed away. And I I really think you should put referrals too because not related to it and it gives you credit because that's work. That's work you have to do to figure out where it goes to and I think you need to get credit for, like, of the 13 that came in this year, you had to refer those 13 to the appropriate offices. And I think that you need to get credit for that because the way that it's documented, it it doesn't look like that. And so I want you to get the credit that you guys deserve. I do remember, like, in terms of the question of did you not have enough
work, I I do recall that last year you were hiring people and needed more overtime. Did was it last year that you needed some some extra support? Yes. And thank you for, raising that. Yes. Last year, we asked for more one time money to hire hourly auditors. For example, that Mukta, he helped us to put this together and help us for peer review, etcetera. Okay. So if you needed that extra support, that meant that you had the work to justify it. Is that correct? Okay. I just I just remember that, and I just wanted to make sure that I
was remembering it correctly. You. The other thing that I want to go to is in which you and I have discussed, a lot, and is something that in terms of the local school let me get to where my question was here. So in terms of and we've discussed this. In terms of the local school activity funds and the issues we have with those schools, and you have found some of those issues, can we is there a way
to weed out is are these problems systemic or are they specific to certain schools? Number one, that's my first question. And then, my second question is, has has one of the recommendations going to those local school activity funds been, like, increased training support for the finance tax from k through 12. Thank you. And I can maybe address the first comment, and I I don't know if, Sima, if you would like to address the training comment for our finance professional at school.
So for the first comment about do we see systemic trend, for, for example, or for a certain school, for the local school activity fund audit, we try to focus on the district. Alright. Is there, like, throughout, like, our local school activity funds, like, is there a systemic, like, all the schools are having the same issue? I would say yes and no. Generally speaking, we do not find really big key issues on local school activity fund. But at the same time, we need to focus that we are focusing on the
financial side mainly. We do not see, you know, strong and, like, really high level fine so that's why we don't have findings. But we did find, like, some comments, observations, and maybe, Danelle, you can speak a little bit about the types of things that we see. Yes. So a lot of things we see are related to the procurement process, like maybe not having approval or a PO before making a purchase, bank reconciliations, maybe being out of balance or not completed in a timely manner, so those sort of things.
So while we may have them across the schools, it may be for different reasons why those things are not being done. Okay. So what we tend to see is that, there's a approximately 20% vacancy rate. And many of the the triggers for why OAG goes out and does audits is new principal, new AA, new financial tech. And we tend to see a lot of the problem areas with the new personnel
coming on board. The learning curve is very steep. It takes a good year to get comfortable with all the systems, all the policies, regulations, yes, all the codes. And what we try to do on the training aspect is we push heavy on the training. We have been doing that over the last two years. We have, with doctor Reed's support, actually have a two year training plan. So when a new FT or AA starts, they actually have a training plan that they go to for two years in a row with supportive training.
We have implemented trainings where the principal with their AA or Feet go together because that gives more of a collaborative collaborative training, and we've done many of those. And then we've got videos. We're really trying to push hard on the training. Thank you. I I appreciate that because I know that that's been a reoccurring problem, and I know it is a very steep learning curve and we lose new hires because they feel overwhelmed. Great. Nanette? Going back to the the level of calls and emails that come into your office
to investigate, I I know mister Moon's asked actually asked this question a couple of times. So I think some of it when you look at it is somewhat intuitive, like, there was a big increase relatively speaking on residency questions. But there's also been over the last couple years, maybe, I don't know, one or two articles in the paper about residency issues. So that that sort of makes sense. And I think it's good to show the total amount of volume that's coming in on the inquiries. But could you also maybe show because this is every inquiry.
Correct? Could you also maybe show how many of those inquiries have actually resulted in some sort of a a finding? Because that, I think, is maybe a not necessarily a better way of looking at it, but a different way of looking at it that might kind of address mister Moon's question on why, you know, why is this really important? Because, yes, you know, as you publicize it, you're gonna get more inform you know, information inquiries, and that's good. But are those actually substantive inquiries? Thank you, Ninette. Great question. And I think great mind think alike too that we started to include the credibility
numbers in the last audit committee meeting that we try to share not exactly credible. What is the term that I use? I think it's report to the audit committee, something along that line. So they are cases that either they are credible or they may be related, you know, to somehow to the board and the, leadership team or some other reasons or they Like a significant improvement is in processes. So we have a number included per year.
We haven't included it here. It's just, because we don't want to confuse a reader since it will need more conversation about that. But thinking about it, we can certainly include a link to that particular document here where we include the number of, reportable cases. I think I remember I used that term. Reportable to audit committee so that that, everyone, the community members can have a fuller picture to understand in addition to the universe, how many of them may have more,
can can give us more information on. Okay. Great. Seeing nothing further, let's move on to item, number 1.04, which is audit follow-up, and I believe, Monia, is going to present. Thank you, Ryan. I'll be presenting the other recommendation follow-up as of October 31. As you can see on the summary table on page two, we currently have five audits with open recommendations. And we're I'm sorry. I'm gonna wait a little bit until she pull up. Sorry. You can go to page two, please.
So as you can see on the summary table on page two, we currently have five audits with open recommendations, and we're able to close 11 this period. Starting with item one on page three, food and nutrition services or FNS. We the two recommendation related related to benchmarking and updating FNS or food and nutrition services manual are in progress and not due as of October 31. Essentially, FNS or food and nutrition services office is awaiting the implementation of their new,
nutrition software to fully address this through recommendation. Then moving on to page four, the procurement process audit. OAG verified and closed two recommendation this period. We verified that regulation five zero one two was updated to include a cooperative as a method of procurement, we also verified that Department of Information Technology or DIT has shifted to a risk based technology process for their vendor and software selection. Regarding the four outstanding remaining item remaining recommendation, they're in progress.
Per management, the completion of these recommendation is pending the final updates of regulations and guideline as well as the implementation of the new audit software, which is expected to fully be operated operated by the end of this month. Then moving on to page seven, the hiring audit. We've seen a lot of, great progress in this area. We closed six recommendation where we verified that human resources and the employee service and
operation office have implemented the employee the onboarding I'm sorry, the onboarding workflow. They have established or developed the new screening procedure from principal hiring. They also have identified stone and their sources for the hiring and the monitoring processes. On page eight, we have listed the five recommendation for the hiring audit. They're outstanding, but they're not due as of October 31. Then moving to our last update on page nine, which is related to the construction
and renovation audit. We conducted this audit in 2025. The design and construction department has made a lot of progress since then. To give you to give you some like, a bit of context, one of our recommendation involve the submittal process. So think of a submittal process as a formal check and approve step where the contractor provides or submit the exact specification and price codes for materials, then FCPS or DNC here specifically must review review must review, approve the submittals, and then return it
to the contractor so they were able to, procure the materials and start with the projects. So in the past, we found that these submittals were not always being returned to the contractor in a timely manner, which has caused at CPS to pay for, some material prices that has increased from the first submittal to the time that they review and return the submittal. So to address this, design and construction office has now implemented and automated reminders within their project management software.
These reminders are alert. They're sent to project team members to ensure those submittals are returned and submitted back to the contractor in a timely manner. And then for the second recommendation, we address the change order approval, in the context of when a school board approval is required. In the past, the dollar amount threshold for school school board approving change verified that DNC has updated its manual to align with the code of Virginia requirements to where
school board is required for, change orders. And the last recommendation, we verified the progress meeting between FCPS and the contractors are now required throughout all the project phases, recommendations that are outstanding but not due as of October 31. Our next audit follow-up as as of January will be presented at the Marsh Audit
Committee meeting. And with that, that's the end of our OASU presentation for other recommendation follow-up. I'll hand it back to Ryan. Thank you, Monia. At this point, I just want to ask, our administration colleagues if they have any feedback on any of these. Not really. I think it was clearly stated. Okay. Board colleagues and committee members, do you have any questions on this one? Okay. Seeing nothing, I think we can move to adjourn, the meeting appropriately.
So the public meeting is now recessed at 05:01PM, and the board will now meet in closed meeting. So then do it now. Okay. Audit committee will now make a motion on 01/05/2026 to go into the closed meeting to, one, discuss personnel matters pursuant to section 2.223711 what? Oh, okay. I think that I think I To one, discuss personal matters looks the same. Pursuant to section 2.23711 a one of the code of Virginia and two, security matters pursuant to section 2.23711
a 19. And three, consult with legal counsel regarding specific matters concerning the provision of legal advice. By such counsel pursuant to section 2.23711 a seven and a eight of the code of Virginia, specifically a, student discipline, b, cybersecurity, and c, personnel matters. Do I have a motion? Moved by mister Moon, seconded by, mister McDaniel. All those in favor? Motion is unanimous for those at the table. We are now in closed meeting. Thank you.