One finding during the annual audit by the Washington State Auditor’s Office will have little effect on the Oak Harbor School District.
The auditor brought to the school district’s attention last year that staff needed to better comply with record keeping issues surrounding two federal programs, Title I, a program to help students at risk of not meeting state academic standards, and special education. Since some staff members work in both programs, they have to keep very close track of how many minutes they spend on each, said Superintendent Rick Schulte.
“That was a relatively minor thing that was already corrected,” Schulte said. After the auditor brought it to the district’s attention last year, Schulte said they took measures to correct it and the auditor had to bring it up again this year because the problem had lasted for half a year.
“It did not result in any harm or financial risk,” Schulte said.
There was never any allegation that the staff weren’t doing their work in these programs; it was just a matter of documentation, Schulte said.
“We are a very low-risk district because we’ve had very good audits for a very long time,” Schulte said, adding that the auditor said the Oak Harbor School District is used as a model for other districts due to its good record keeping.