AUSTIN, Texas — The State Auditor’s Office released the findings of its audit of the Texas Education Agency (TEA), flagging issues with the agency’s management-to-staff ratio, grant monitoring, and verification of pre-K providers.

The audit was initiated via a budget rider authored by Texas House Representative Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, which passed 100-37 with bipartisan support.

“We knew there were a lot of issues at TEA or we were fairly certain… we needed to see what was really going on behind those closed doors at TEA,” said Rodríguez Ramos.

Auditors flagged the management-to-staff ratio at TEA as exceeding Texas’ requirement for large state agencies.

Agencies like TEA with more than 100 full-time employees (FTEs) must maintain a ratio of at least 11 staff FTEs per manager, but auditors found the TEA had one manager per 3.5 employees and did not request an appeal to the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) to get the adjusted ratio approved.

This finding comes as Governor Greg Abbott is calling for reduction of “administrative bloat” in public school districts. The Comptroller’s office will investigate up to four school districts with the goal to ” examine whether district spending complies with the law and reaches students, classrooms and teachers — rather than fueling administrative growth or non-instructional bureaucracy.”

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Rep. Rodríguez Ramos says she would like to see the same scrutiny applied to the agency that oversees such districts.

“We really need to look at whether we’re taking over TEA, because the standards that they’re putting on our public schools, he’s completely overlooking when it comes to the agency that’s right under his own nose,” she said.

The audit also lists shortcomings in regard to oversight of state-funded grants, including lack of sufficient monitoring, missing documentation of monitoring, and monitoring inconsistencies.

In response to the audit’s findings, TEA provided CBS Austin the following statement:

TEA sends out 40 billion dollars to school systems each year to support Texas public education. Within the scope of the audit, there were zero unallowable expenses identified, and the results were extremely clean. As is common with audits of this scope, the SAO identified opportunities for the agency to improve, and TEA has already begun implementing identified improvement.

TEA also addressed its management-to-staff ratio, writing to CBS Austin that, “Compared to the more than 100 Texas state agencies reviewed, TEA is the third leanest, most efficient state agency with regard to the ratio of employees to total appropriations.”

It also added, “Of all the state education agencies in the United States, TEA is the single most efficient state education agency (smallest staffing ratio compared to statewide enrollment) in the country.”

Another major finding of the audit detailed failures by TEA to verify that public and open-enrollment charter schools looking to partner with private pre-kindergarten providers ensured that pre-K providers fulfilled all applicable requirements.

According to the audit, such requirements include:

Compliance with the State’s childcare licensing standards. Required designations and accreditations. Class size limits required by the Texas Education Code, Section 29.171. Contracts with all required terms, including but not limited to attendance requirements and assessments

The TEA announced new pre-K intermediaries last week.

To read the audit in full, click here.