The Washington State Auditor’s Office issued a finding against Battle Ground Public Schools Thursday over how it handled federal funds.
The report said the district did not follow federal rules for allocating Title I funds to schools, resulting in $36,032 of questioned costs.
Title I funds support programs for low-income students, and the amount of services provided at schools with higher percentages of low-income students might have been unfairly limited as a result of the misallocation, the audit said.
The state auditor’s office determined one primary school with a rate of low-income students below the federal government’s 35 percent threshold received funding that should have been allocated to other eligible schools during the 2017-2018 school year.
Despite the finding, the district received clean audits in regards to its finances, federal grants and accountability, according to Meagan Hayden, chief financial officer with Battle Ground Public Schools. Hayden said this is the fifth year the district has received all clean audits. She said the finding was a “non-compliant one.”
“It was not related to an internal control failure or a misstatement or an error,” she said, adding that the overall audit was unmodified.
The finding came because the district has to rank its schools that will receive the Title I money. When a school’s poverty rate falls below 35 percent, the district has to make adjustments to give the qualifying schools priority. Battle Ground didn’t do that when Tukes Valley Primary School fell to a low-income rate of 32.74 percent, Hayden said.
She added that the district has changed how the rank order is done for the current school year, and put in place processes to ensure that the rank order aligns with Battle Ground’s low-income rates moving forward.
