BALTIMORE — A newly released legislative audit found several issues with financial management practices of Baltimore City Public Schools.
One item that concerned auditors was the school system's failure to properly pre-screen new hires who directly work with minors.
"During fiscal year 2022, City Schools hired 1,550 individuals that were assigned to schools or student programs that would have contact with minors. We arbitrarily tested 12 employees hired during fiscal year 2022 and 2023 with direct contact with minors and noted that City Schools had not performed the screenings for 7 of the employees as of October 23, 2023 (296 to 436 days after the date of hire)." the audit states.
A State law, effective July 2019, requires certain applicants, provide written statements of whether or not they ever were subject of a child sexual abuse or misconduct investigation at a prior place of employment. The school is also required to contact former employers of the applicant to confirm their statements.
Here is how the school system said they were correcting the issue.
Most other findings were related to mishandling of expenditures, including school police overtime.
"According to City Schools’ records, during fiscal year 2022, it paid 40,078 overtime hours totaling $2.1 million to 82 police officers. Our test of overtime disclosed that the overtime was not pre-approved as required. We tested overtime hours charged for one pay period for 9 of the 10 officers that had 1,000 or more overtime hours in fiscal year 2022. Our test disclosed that for 7 of the 9 officers, 128 of the 481 hours of overtime totaling $7,150 were not approved in advance as required," the audit concluded.
City Schools also appear to have wrongly awarded at least two contracts totaling $5.1 million.
"For example, for one contract award totaling $2.3 million, City Schools incorrectly calculated evaluation scores and our recalculation of the scores disclosed that another vendor that bid $1.9 million ($400,000 less) should have been awarded the contract," auditors wrote. "City Schools acknowledged that it had made an error when calculating the evaluation scoring for these vendors."
The system didn't pay some vendors on time either, resulting in hundred-of-millions in late payments.
"City Schools did not ensure vendor invoices were paid timely, resulting in 16,632 invoices (12 percent) totaling $142 million being paid over 90 days after the invoice date during the period from July 1, 2021 to February 28, 2023," auditors said.
Of those bills, 21 of them totaling $4 million, were paid anywhere from 123 to 1,382 days after their due date.
"The majority of the delays were caused by employee staffing issues or improper routing of the invoices for payment," was the school's explanation to auditors.
This latest audit was a follow-up to a prior one conducted in October 2018, which uncovered similar issues.
"We determined that City Schools satisfactorily addressed 6 of those 12 findings. The remaining 6 findings are repeated in this report," auditors wrote.
