44.4 % of Federal Funds Audited Found to be Misused,
Not 3% as CISD Implies

CISD Continues with PR "Spin" on TEA Report

by Harold Gentry

Taxpayers, CISD's public relations director keeps on putting out spin to make the amount of federal funds misused look insignificant by saying that only 3% of $10.7 million was noncompliant. The below statement issued by CISD's Communication Director Lisa Magers with the TEA preliminary report can be confusing if you don’t pay close attention.

Lisa Magers wrote “During the three years (2003-04, 2004-05, 2005-06) selected for audit by TEA, the District was responsible for the administration of more than $10.7 million dollars in Federal grant funds (“Funds”). At this time, TEA is requesting a refund by the District of $367,027.24, or approximately 3% of the total amount of Funds awarded to the District, in expenditures which were found by TEA to be noncompliant under the definition of the grants, or as a result of inadequate documentation in support of the expenditure of the Funds.” (End of Lisa Magers's statement).

What you need to know is that only $826,951.71 or less than $1 million of the $10.7 million has been examined. That leaves $9.8 million that has not yet been audited by the TEA to determine compliance or noncompliance with the federal rules and regulations regarding grants.

The accurate picture is this: Based on TEA’s finding of 44.4% misuse in the $826,951.71 examined then one could now speculate that of the $10.7 million administered in federal grants between 2003-06 that there is a possibility that a total of $4.75 million could possibly have been misused and needs to be repaid.

In other words, the audit of less than 10% of the federal grants resulted in CISD owing $367,027.24. CISD has now been assessed at a high risk of misusing federal grant funds. It is logical to project that an audit of the entire $10.7 million of federal grant fund use would reveal that 44.4% of the entire amount has been misused, or $4.75 million which needs to be repaid.

I checked with TEA auditor Ramon Medina, and he said my conclusions are factually correct.

We need a complete forensic audit to determine the depth of all fund misuses be they local, state or federal. The TEA audit only covered federal funds.