Report 2021-614 Recommendation 9 Responses

Report 2021-614: California Department of Education: It Needs to Provide Better Oversight to Ensure That Local Educational Agencies Promptly and Effectively Use Federal COVID‑19 Funds (Release Date: October 2021)

Recommendation #9 To: Education, Department of

To ensure that it monitors LEAs that may be at higher risk of misinterpreting spending requirements or misusing ESSER funds, Education should, if it finds that the LEAs it monitors have improperly categorized their spending in Other Activities, provide guidance to all LEAs to clarify the types of spending that they should include in this category.

Education continues to not concur with the CSA's recommendation that improperly categorizing spending indicates that LEAs are misusing federal stimulus funds. As previously indicated, Education will continue to monitor the reporting of ESSER and GEER expenditures and provide ongoing guidance, technical assistance and training to all LEAs on the appropriate use and reporting of ESSER and GEER funds.

Therefore, no further updates will be provided for this recommendation.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Status: Will Not Implement

As we described in the report, LEAs have a number of categories to report their expenditures in; however, as of June 30, 2021, LEAs had collectively reported 40 percent, or $438 million, of their $1.1 billion in ESSER I spending in the Other Activities category. In fact, as we described in the report, some of the items and activities that one LEA we contacted—Los Angeles Unified School District—included in the Other Activities category met the criteria for other distinct spending categories, such as purchase of cleaning supplies. As we stated in the report, miscategorized spending hinders Education's and U.S. ED's ability to accurately evaluate how LEAs are spending the funds and what results to expect from such spending.

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All Recommendations in 2021-614

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.