Audit: Norwin mistakes cause state's $101,255 overpayment for busing

Norwin may lose about $101,250 in future transportation reimbursements for overreporting the busing of about 260 nonpublic and charter school students from 2016-2020, a state audit found.

The school district got the extra $101,255 reimbursement in transportation funds beginning in the 2016-2017 school year and continuing though 2019-2020, because of mistakes it made in reporting the total number of those students it had transported, according to a state Auditor General’s report released on Tuesday.

The mistakes in reporting of busing charter and nonpublic school students was the result of “significant internal control deficiencies,” the audit found.

The Auditor General recommended that the state Department of Education withhold future transportation reimbursements to cover the overpayment. The education department will determine how to adjust Norwin’s “future funding allocations to balance out past issues,” said Gary Miller, a spokesman for the Auditor General’s office.

Norwin ran afoul of the state regulations because it lacked the proper written request for busing from the parent or guardians of 263 nonpublic or charter school students.

Norwin also miscategorized some special education students as nonpublic school students who live in the Norwin district but were transported to other schools. The school district also failed to report some charter school students who were bused, even though Norwin had the proper written requests to bus those students, according to the audit.

Ryan Kirsch, Norwin’s director of business affairs, said Tuesday the reporting mistakes have been rectified and controls were instituted in 2018, although the state said there was an overreporting of 71 students for transportation reimbursements in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, amounting to about $27,330 in overpayment. The internal controls reduced the number of misreported transportation data from 112 students in the 2016-2017 school year.

The auditors also found that Norwin ran into problems when it assigned one employee to categorize, calculate and report the busing of those nonpublic and charter school students without another employee reviewing the work. Norwin needs to train the employee on education department requirements, the audit found.

Norwin informed the auditors that it will implement a system to reconcile all bus rosters for the nonpublic and charter school students and institute a second level of review of the data that is reported. The district was given the chance to review its busing records for the previous school year and submit a revised report to the Department of Education, if needed.

The reporting mistakes Norwin made are a common audit finding among school districts, Kirsch said.

But, Miller said the Auditor General would not characterize it as a common mistake, “but the audits sometimes find school districts could do a better job accurately tracking student data – as we found in Norwin.”

Neither Kirsch nor Superintendent Jeff Taylor were with the school district at the start of the audit period. Kirsch was hired in May 2017. William Kerr was the superintendent in 2016 through June 2019. Taylor took over the superintendent’s duties in July 2019.