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<\/a><\/p>\nBy Dan Israel\/Hudson County View<\/p>\n
At Thursday\u2019s over seven-hour meeting, the third-party firm that conducted the audit, Lerch, Vinci, and Bliss LLP, released a 3-page summary of their findings.<\/p>\n
While the full 80-page audit report was referred to law enforcement, authorities directed the board not to release the full audit to the board or public so as to not impede an ongoing investigation, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Norma Fernandez.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made the necessary changes to the varying departments as we received feedback. The last part was the special education department \u2026 Following the release of part one of our districtwide special education audit, the auditing firm has been completing the highly complex second phase,\u201d Fernandez added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis phase evaluates allowable expenses under Chapter 192 and 193 for special education services provided to students attending non-public schools outside our immediate jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeff Bliss, of Lerch, Vinci, and Bliss LLP, then presented summarized findings from their second phase of the audit of special education in non-public schools, specifically including non-public state aid programs and the district\u2019s Office of Non-Public Schools.<\/p>\n
The review, which encompassed both the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school year, started with going over financials such as the completion reports for non-public school state aid.<\/p>\n
As he began to break down the summary, Board President Noemi Velazquez and Board Counsel Robert Pruchnik interrupted him to note a copies of the shorter 3-page report were being distributed to the board for brief review.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stress confidentiality. No notes, no pictures, no anything. Thank you. And we\u2019re collecting them right back,\u201d note Velazquez.<\/p>\n
When it was made clear copies of the report were to be taken back from board members after the presentation, members of the audience shouted that \u201cit\u2019s a public document\u201d and asked that the report be displayed on the projector screen \u2013 to no avail.<\/p>\n
According to Bliss, the numbers in the completion reports for non-public school state aid varied from the district\u2019s internal accounting records and annual state audit reports were off by \u201ca very significant amount\u201d in some cases.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did not agree to the audit reports which did agree to the internal accounting records. Eventually, what happened was the state required the district to reissue those non-public completion reports to agree to what the audit had, which agreed to the district records,\u201d stared Bliss.<\/p>\n
When reviewing third-party service provider billing and documentation, Bliss said the audit found more issues and \u201cmultiple concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCorresponding emails between parents and the Office of Non-Public Schools and the service provider had different times than the times on the time sheet,\u201d Bliss said.<\/p>\n
The third party employee timesheets did not match their invoices nor the internal student sign-in sheets, he said, adding that some timesheets lacked non-public school locations where the service was provided, or indicated multiple locations during the same time period, \u201cwhich is virtually impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some services were provided to these non-public school students on Saturday or Sunday or late in the evening with times as late as 9:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
The majority of services provided by the third-party service provider for the Chapter 192 and 193 services were provided by Jersey City Public School employees who were contracted by the service provider to provide services at times after the school day concluded, Bliss said.<\/p>\n
The report found that students in services were assigned for these after-school services by the district\u2019s Office of Non-Public Schools, not the third-party provider.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found that a little unusual because the third-party services provided us with the approved timesheets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, it\u2019s very unclear if they were aware of the students and teachers assigned or corresponding times services were scheduled to be before. This third-party service provider did not assign the teachers, they did not assign the times, they did not assign the students to the teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In reviewing the invoices from the third party, there\u2019s possible duplicate billing and double compensation to certain employees, Bliss continued.<\/p>\n
For the 2023-2024 school year, the third-party service provider billed almost $82,000 for 75 students whose services appear to be provided during the school day by Jersey City paid employees.<\/p>\n
In reviewing the staff\u2019s schedule, the student sign-in sheets, and then comparing what Jersey City paid employees did during the school day, the audit noted certain students showed up on the invoices of the third-party provider.<\/p>\n
As part of that $82,000 billing, the report found 62 students on both the Jersey City paid employees\u2019 schedules as well as the third-party provider invoice- account for over $65,000.<\/p>\n
The report also highlights two instances in the 2023-2024 school year where Jersey City paid employees appear to receive compensation by both the district and the third-party service provider for overlapping time during the regular school day- totaling 17 hours for $765.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a significant amount of time \u2026 but it should not happen \u2026 The third-party service provider should have known that those services were done during the day and were not done by their paid employees, and they should have not invoiced the district for those.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued that the audit found \u201cvery sloppy, obviously, record keeping, incomplete record keeping,\u201d especially for 4071 eligibility forms that are filled out by the parents of the non-public school student for the Jersey City Office of Non-Public Schools.<\/p>\n
On the second and third page is the determination of eligibility and the services to be provided, which that office or the third party is responsible for filing out, and for the 2023-2024 school year there were 4071 eligibility forms missing for 97 of the 200 students listed on the third-party service provider\u2019s invoice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were being invoiced for services provided to students that did not provide us with a 4071 eligibility form,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could not determine if the student was eligible. We could not determine if the student even requested the services to be before them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bliss said the third-party service provider charged the district $63,368 that year for services provided to students who did not have eligibility forms presented for our review.<\/p>\n
The date the application received and the months services can begin was blank in many instances, and eligibility was not detailed per the criteria which includes the type of assessment that was made to determine if the student was eligible- such as a progress report, a report card, standardized test results, or test scores- was also blank.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t determine what method was used to determine eligibility of the students,\u201d Bliss said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn reviewing this service provider\u2019s invoice, the invoice for this provider was based on the contract amount- meaning the contract divided by ten,\u201d Bliss said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did not detail students serviced or times serviced as was required in the contract. The contract clearly spelled out that the vendor\u2019s invoice would detail the students provided the services and the date and time the services would be provided.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the 2022-2023 school year, the distract received $60,000 in Chapter 193 funding, but the third party did not charge the full amount of the contract it could have under non-public school state aid- which resulted in the district having to return $23,000 in unexpended funds.<\/p>\n
He said those funds could have been spent on that contract rather than being charged to the IDA program or carried forward to the next school year.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo basically, you are out twenty three thousand dollars that should have been funded by the state aid non-public school fund,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another significant area of concern was the IDA-funded SAT\/PSAT program, which ran on Saturdays from 9 to 11 p.m. from March 2 to the end of June.<\/p>\n
On Memorial Day Weekend, no students attended, but timesheets were regularly submitted each Saturday for anywhere from 4 to 7 teachers including a lead teacher and a supervisor.<\/p>\n
In addition, employee timesheets often charged to the federal IDA grant program did not describe work as SAT\/PSAT-related and occurred on non-program days like Sundays and sometimes during schools nights at as late as 10 p.m.<\/p>\n
Looking at building swipe records to determine if teachers swiped in at the times listed on timesheets, Bliss said they did not support times reflected on timesheets for the Saturday morning program.<\/p>\n
There were times when seven teachers put timesheets in on a Saturday, and only three people swiped in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many instances, the invoices were not complete. It appeared, someone either took a page out, or a page got misplaced, but the invoice used to pay the vendor was incomplete,\u201d Bliss explained.<\/p>\n
Velazquez noted her displeasure with receiving the findings of the audit during the public meeting without receiving a copy to review prior.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so much here to unpack that, I\u2019ll be honest with you, I have been on this board for seven years and at the helm for two years, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve been so\u2026 disappointed to receive something so late, so grave, yet in such little time to unpack it,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that it was just recently submitted to the district, but I think, as board trustees- the governing body of this district- we should have had an opportunity to dialogue more on it prior than you presenting it to the total population.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jersey City Board of Education announced the summary findings of the second part of the special education…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,107591,107592,107593,60228,107594,9,24,62825,101939,63],"class_list":["post-280259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-chapter-192","tag-chapter-193","tag-jeff-bliss","tag-jersey-city-board-of-education","tag-jersey-city-boe-special-education-audit","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-noemi-velazquez","tag-norma-fernandez","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}