Administering the School Budget & Accounting and Auditing Essay - 2

Administering the School Budget & Accounting and Auditing - Essay Example A comprehensive and aligned education program should give out the data that are necessary in answering questions like who finances education, how funds are allocated, how many funds are spending on the program, and how education resources are aligned to the achievement of students (Brimley, Rulon, Garfield, et.al, 2008). For these questions to be answered, a system of education requires more components than just finance. It needs a system of staff records, record of students, property system, program component, and a system of community service. The system of instructional agreement can be directed to records of students. This will give policymakers a Herculean analytic capability that would make timely and cost-effective decisions. This paper reports on incidents of misuse of funds that might have been avoided if a proper accounting and auditing practices had been followed. The paper discuses a situation in one of the school districts in Fentress County Tennessee. A school needs to be concerned with the achievement of a bottom line that is profitable. Many education entities have an expectation of being in a position that is breakeven whenever an academic year ends. In York elementary school, in Fentress County Tennessee, the situation is particularly different. ... This audit established that approximately $ 125,000 had been allegedly paid to unperformed work. The auditing statement showed out that there had been some misused credit cards. In this regard, the credit card of the school was used to purchase more than $ 3,500 of personal purchases that were unauthorized. This is what made the state Bureau to allege misconduct in this school. According to the audit made, no employee had been resigned from his position due to the prior audits. When the school’s principal was asked to give out an explanation for the situation, he argued that all employees in a school are administrators and that they should always make purchases even without their boss’s authorization. Additionally, a charge had been split in order to obtain the limit of the credit card. In this case, the principle added that there were some corrective measures that had already been taken in maintaining the school district. However, the measures taken had not been realiz ed; therefore, the audit concluded that there was a failure in compliance of York elementary school with the districts' procedures and policies in the school’s financial oversight and accounting. This was a terribly serious situation in the school. This report was displayed as parents and students of this school were protesting the decision of the district to put one principal on leave. After this audit, an investigation concerning the school’s financial system was set. The investigation on York elementary school reported that the school district failed to have a reliable internal control. This means that the internal control was not appropriate to prevent the misuse of specific assets. A number of employees of the school made a confirmation to the