Legislative audit: DESE distributed about $3.4 billion in grants in fiscal 2019, audit shows

Joey Budenberg, supervising senior auditor with Arkansas Legislative Audit, told the Senate Education Committee the Division of Legislative Audit's 2019 summary of Department of Education grants shows the department distributed about $3.4 billion in grants to school districts, charter schools, education service cooperatives and other entities.

"Each year, we prepare a summary of all the grants distributed by the Arkansas Department of Education," Budenberg said in presenting the report. He told the committee that during the 2019 fiscal year about $2.8 billion came from the public school fund, roughly $524 million from federal sources and about $117 million from miscellaneous state sources.

Budenberg underscored that the report describes distribution amounts and funding sources but did not include recipient-level audit procedures to verify how individual districts and charter systems used those funds. "No audit procedures were performed at the recipient level regarding how these monies were ultimately used," he said.

Committee members were shown attachments and program descriptions in the audit packet and were told similar line-item and narrative detail is available on Legislative Audit's website. The report noted the department distributed approximately $17 million less in fiscal 2019 than in fiscal 2018, a reduction the audit recorded in the summary tables.

The committee did not take formal action on the report; members accepted the auditor's presentation and moved on to other agenda items. The audit and the detailed attachments are available for further committee follow-up and for legislators who want to examine specific grant programs or pursue recipient-level questions.