Lamar CISD told to return state funds after TEA attendance audit finds coding errors

The Lamar Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trustees received a report Jan. 23 on a Texas Education Agency limited-scope attendance audit covering the 2021–22 school year that identified multiple student-record coding errors and will reduce the district’s state funding by $432,231 before accounting for tuition already collected.

The audit found five problem areas, including kindergarten enrollments for students who were under the state’s September 1 minimum age, early‑education students miscoded in the district’s Student Information System and bilingual/ESL students reported without required parent-consent indicators. Brian Moore, who presented the district’s audit response, said the district had collected about $156,000 in tuition for children enrolled in an employee preschool program (PEGASUS) and that TEA will deduct the reduced funding from future state aid; Moore said, “They deduct it from the aid that they give us that’s in the pipeline.”

Why it matters: the district’s presentations flagged the reductions as material to the 2021–22 accounting period and explained the longer-term operational changes planned to prevent repeats — steps that affect staffing, training and how attendance data are entered and reviewed.

Details of the findings and financial impact: the audit’s five review areas produced expected reductions that, combined, total $432,231. That includes an expected $197,298 reduction in special education funding and other program adjustments; after the $156,000 in tuition already collected for PEGASUS students is applied, district staff estimate a net negative impact of $276,231. The presentation listed individual expected reductions: $155,371 (PEGASUS tuition return gross), $197,298 (special education), $78,205 (speech-only early education coding), $72 (bilingual ESL), and $998.43 (career and technical education contact hours), with a total gross reduction of $432,231 and a net of $276,231 when offset by tuition.

Root causes and corrective steps: presenters attributed the errors primarily to high employee turnover during the 2021–22 period and gaps in training. District staff said they have already increased training and data oversight and added positions to monitor attendance daily. Planned corrective measures include: - Biweekly reviews by the special education PEIMS clerk to identify mis‑coded early‑education students and prompt campus corrections. - Monthly training and open office hours by Multilingual Education staff to identify and correct parent-consent coding for bilingual/ESL students. - A proposed centralized registration and attendance team that would shift data-entry duties from roughly 50 campus staff (as an additional duty) to a dedicated team of seven clerks, overseen by the district’s registration and attendance coordinator, with positions absorbed through attrition where possible.

Board reaction and next steps: trustees asked whether the district would pay the amount directly or have TEA deduct it; Moore confirmed TEA will deduct the identified reductions from state aid. Trustees and staff said they have already reviewed subsequent years’ data and implemented controls for 2022–23 and 2023–24; staff reported they do not anticipate further adjustments in recent years but will continue internal audits. No formal board action was taken at the Jan. 23 meeting; staff described the corrective actions and said they will continue monitoring and centralizing attendance/registration tasks to reduce future audit risk.

The district’s presentation noted the audit is conducted under Title 19 of the Texas Administrative Code; the district said it will maintain required attendance records for five years and continue the corrective review cadence to prepare for future TEA desk audits.