The state’s performance audit on the Bradford Area School
District school years 2002-03 and 2003-04 shows that inaccurate
reporting by the transportation department led to the district
receiving $116,984 in overpayments from the state Department of
Education.

The two-year audit listed in its findings of fact that the
district’s transportation department reports have been riddled with
errors consistently since the Department of Education began keeping
track in 1985.

“If you looked over the last 19 years, which would be eight
audits, there would be similar findings in each one,” explained
District Business Manager Kathy Kelly on Friday.

The errors occurred “because district personnel failed to
implement our prior audit recommendations,” the audit reads.
Despite being told each time to correct the problems in reporting,
the transportation department’s inaccuracies continued year after
year.

“This kind of supports what the district is doing with the
transportation department,” Kelly said.

“If what you’re doing doesn’t work for 19 years, you should
change it,” agreed Superintendent Sandra Romanowski.

And change it is what they did.

“The issues were primarily paperwork errors … (papers) that were
not done properly,” Romanowski explained. The paperwork was being
submitted by the transportation department – so the district laid
off director John Matthews effective Dec. 31 and hired a private
contractor to handle transportation.

“The consistent findings against us without being (corrected)
led us to the decision” to contract bus services with Laidlaw Inc.
from Dec. 1, 2005 to June 30, 2008, Romanowski said.

The contract with Laidlaw was announced at a school board
meeting in November, as was the elimination of the position of
transportation director with the district. Matthews, who was
promoted to fill that position following the dismissal of Doug
Barhight in 1994, was laid off and thanked for his years of
service.

The problems with the transportation department’s audit findings
predated Matthews, but continued while he was at the helm of the
department.

“It was costing the taxpayers money,” Romanowski said, referring
to the inaccuracies in paperwork. She did not elaborate on what the
costs incurred from the inaccuracies might be.

“We had to get someone in to properly complete reports so this
doesn’t happen,” she said.

According to the audit, for the 2003-04 school year, the errors
were as follows: daily mileage that vehicles traveled with pupils
was incorrectly reported for seven vehicles, resulting in an
overstatement of 130.8 miles per day; daily mileage for seven
vehicles traveling without students was overstated by 41.5 miles
per day; the greatest number of pupils transported for two vehicles
was overstated by 14.5 pupils; the transportation director, John
Matthews, failed to report tenths of a mile, which caused the
Department of Education’s computer system to change mileage from
230 miles to 23.0 miles; the number of non-reimbursable pupils
reported was understated by 101; and the number of pupils reported
that were within walking distance of a school, but rode a bus
because the road conditions were deemed hazardous, was understated
by 12.

Those errors resulted in $51,789 in overpayments to the district
in transportation reimbursement for the 2003-04 school year.

For the 2002-03 school year, the audit reports the following
errors in the transportation department: daily mileage for five
vehicles traveling with pupils was overstated by 41.7 miles per
day; daily mileage for five vehicles traveling without pupils was
overstated by 1.8 miles per day; the number of trips for one
vehicle was incorrectly reported; the greatest number of pupils
transported for one vehicle was overstated by 16 pupils; the number
of private school pupils transported was overstated by 103 pupils;
the number of non-reimbursable pupils reported was under-reported
by 244; and the number of pupils reported that were within walking
distance of a school, but rode a bus because the road conditions
were deemed hazardous, was understated by five.

The errors resulted in a $25,540 overpayment in reimbursements
for pupil transportation, and a $39,655 overpayment of private
school transportation reimbursements for the 2002-03 school
year.

That money has to be paid back to the state, Romanowski
explained, as the district was not legally entitled to it. The
district had to put the money into escrow as soon as they were
alerted to the overpayment.

The normal practice is for the state to withhold any overpayment
from future allocations.

The audit also notes that Matthews “did not have on file a copy
of the 2002-03 end-of-year report that was submitted” to the
Department of Education, although the law requires those reports be
kept for a period of at least six years.

Romanowski said that the district has no intention of trying to
hide the fact that errors had been made in the past, but will
instead face the errors and correct the problems.

“You admit it, you fix it, and you move on,” she said.

“We’re stewards of the taxpayer’s money,” Romanowski said,
adding that responsible spending is a must.

“You can’t fix everything overnight. The past was done
inefficiently,” she acknowledged. “We’re doing everything in our
power to assure we do better in the future.”

She also explained that Laidlaw began with the district four
months into this school year, meaning some audit reports had
already been submitted. Therefore, it may take a little longer to
see the positive results that the district is sure will be
coming.

Kelly explained that at Monday’s regular board meeting, there
will be a presentation about Laidlaw and changes that have been
made in the district’s transportation.

“We’re going to get into some of the things that were done
incorrectly,” she said. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the
large group instruction room at the Floyd C. Fretz Middle
School.

The transportation department was not the only place where audit
findings were made.

Other findings in the audit reported mistakes in the accuracy of
tuition billing and in the inadvertent failure of some former
school board members to file certain necessary paperwork.

Kelly explained that students who are in placement at the Beacon
Light Behavioral Health Systems Inc. and attend public school in
the Bradford district have their tuition paid by their home
districts. The tuition rate is set each year in April or May.

In the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years, “we shortchanged Beacon
Light,” Kelly said. “It was a clerical error.”

She explained the billing was done at the previous year’s rate,
which left a shortfall of $6,153.

“Our total billing is around $700,000 to $800,000,” she said,
adding that the shortfall didn’t amount to much.

Kelly explained the other finding in the audit was that three
former board members had not filed statements of financial
interests the year after they stopped serving on the board.

“This was something that had never been checked on in the past,”
she said. In fact, the district wasn’t even aware it was a
requirement until it was mentioned in this audit.

After the requirement became clear, the district began sending
the disclosure forms to all administrators and board members who
had served the previous year, which corrects the problem.