Audit: Lax oversight, missing items at Lake Stevens schools

Published 9:12 pm Monday, June 22, 2015

LAKE STEVENS — School administrators here are changing their methods for keeping track of district possessions after a state audit found lax inventory procedures and hundreds of missing items.

The state auditor’s office released an accountability audit for the Lake Stevens School District Thursday that looks at practices and policies between September 2012 and August 2014.

The auditor found that the district “does not have adequate internal controls to safeguard and account for its assets.” School officials are responsible for tracking and caring for all items purchased with public money. These include vehicles, tools and electronic devices like computers or televisions owned by the district.

Staff did not follow up in a timely manner on items missing during annual inventories. Nor did they follow district rules that require seeing each item in person before certifying an inventory list, according to the audit. They also failed to consistently track identifying information like serial numbers.

The district did an inventory in June 2014 but did not investigate 1,226 missing items until March. A month ago, the district submitted a list of 635 recently found items and 422 missing items. Of the original 1,226 missing items, 169 were not accounted for on either list.

“As of May 2015, the District is unable to locate 414 assets, including multiple tablets, cameras, laptops, and tools,” according to the audit.

That number looks deceptively high, assistant superintendent Teresa Main said, because it includes items that have been missing for years. The district’s practice for more than a decade has been to leave items on the inventory even if they are missing, rather than removing them after multiple attempts to locate them.

A main reason items are listed as missing is due to a gap in inventory practices, she said.

“There’s no problem with theft,” Main said. “It’s basically old equipment that gets thrown away without removing it from the inventory.”

Among the missing items are lawn mowers that stopped mowing, VCRs that started eating VHS tapes and were swapped out for DVD players, and a 15-year-old digital camera that hasn’t been seen in years. When something is thrown away it should be checked off the inventory, but that doesn’t always happen. That leaves holes in the record and, over years, they add up.

The problem stems from the district not dedicating enough time or resources to do thorough inventories and look for missing items, the auditor concluded.

The report recommends the district take a complete inventory and follow up on any missing items immediately. It also suggests: documenting changes in inventory; making sure staff has enough time and training to track items and report or investigate missing ones; giving items different identification numbers and recording those; and reporting all known or suspected losses to the state auditor in a timely manner.

District officials agreed with the audit’s findings.

“The District has taken steps to improve and strengthen internal controls,” according to a response to the state auditor.

Those steps include changing the rules so items are removed from the inventory after staff has been unable to locate them for several years, Main said. More staff time will be dedicated to month-long inventories that take place each summer, when they scour the district’s schools and office buildings, she said. Follow-ups are to be done more frequently and procedures for recording items or reporting them missing should be made clearer.

The auditor plans to review the district’s progress in the next audit. The last accountability audit for the Lake Stevens School District was in 2013 and did not find any problems.

In other areas audited this year, the district adequately followed legal requirements and protected public resources, according to the report.

Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.