No-one is watching for fraud in Kentucky’s school districts???!!!

A huge brouhaha is unfolding in Shelby County as discussions continue to swirl around the embezzlement of about $600,000 of Shelby County School District funds by a former district finance person. The latest shot, reported by the Shelby County News-Sentinel in “Board questions auditor over fraud,” reveals something that could be a major, statewide problem.

Here’s what happened. When asked why the required annual audits of Shelby County’s funding had not identified the thefts, which reportedly occurred for multiple years, the current audit firm said:

“’Well basically that’s because we were not engaged to do so. We were engaged to do a financial audit, which is required in order to receive the KDE funding, your federal funding. If you read through our contract that we have with you – the contract’s approved by the state – it specifically mentions in there that we’re not here to detect fraud.’”

So, there it is. Kentucky taxpayers are spending literally billions each year on our public school system and it appears that no-one is responsible for checking on a routine basis to see if any of that money is being illegally diverted.

To be sure, there have been some spectacular discoveries by the Kentucky Auditor of Public Accounts Adam Edelen in other districts like Dayton Independent and Mason County, but these only happened when local whistle blowers tipped his office about problems. The Kentucky auditor isn’t funded and isn’t responsible to ride herd on the public schools.

I thought each district’s required annual audits were supposed to do that.

Apparently, no-one is doing that.

This isn’t going to fly. The latest Annual Financial Revenues and Expenditures Report for 2012-13 from the Kentucky Department of Education shows in that school year the total amount of taxpayer money funneled through Kentucky’s school districts was $7,880,001,383. That’s just too much temptation for the greedy. And, we are not talking about charter schools here. This fraud and waste is going undetected in traditional public schools right here in Kentucky. It’s time to do a better job protecting the students and the taxpayers.