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Jonas Charter board approves audit and tax contracts and adopts corrective action plan after five audit findings
Summary
The board approved contracts for audit and tax preparation and adopted a corrective action plan addressing five audit findings — including a 4% error rate in unduplicated pupil count reporting and issues with TK enrollment and ELOP forms — and committed to new verification steps with county and state offices.
Jonas Charter School’s Board of Directors voted Feb. 9 to approve two professional services agreements and to adopt a corrective action plan in response to five audit findings.
Anita, a finance staff presenter, told the board the packet contained two agreements: audit services, "about $38,700," and a tax-preparation and filing agreement for the school's nonprofit corporation (the transcript did not specify a clear dollar amount for the tax contract). She said the contracts must be on file with the county office by April 1.
The board then reviewed a corrective action plan (CAP) designed to address five findings from the most recent audit. Staff said finding No. 1 concerned the unduplicated pupil count: during testing of free and reduced meal documentation, two students in a sample of 60 were incorrectly reported as eligible, producing an error rate of about 4% and a questioned cost of $7,167. Anita said staff will have the teaching-and-learning director review CALPADS reports against source documents and sign off, and the business office will perform a second review before certifying the data.
Staff described clerical and process errors for transitional kindergarten (TK) enrollment that led to one student being admitted outside the age range and triggered class-size/ratio compliance issues. Remedies include an automatic filter on the application for out-of-range birthdates, manual birthdate checks before lotteries, registrar verification against birth certificates, and weekly staffing logs to document student-to-staff ratios.
Additional findings covered expanded learning opportunity program (ELOP) staffing ratios and incomplete before/after-school enrollment forms; staff outlined cohort-by-cohort staffing, daily spreadsheets of adults on duty, dual recordkeeping (K-12 downloads plus Google Drive hard copies) and a stop-gap system preventing students from attending programs without completed forms.
Board members asked whether broader process checks would be applied to other areas; staff pointed to the TK–12 audit guide and said program managers will implement best practices and that the CAP will be filed with Natomas Unified, the county office and the California Department of Education. The board passed the CAP by roll call vote.
No further action was recorded from the closed session earlier in the meeting. The board also approved the audit- and tax-related contracts as presented.
The next steps staff outlined include filing the CAP with relevant state and county offices, standing checks in the weeks leading up to October reporting, and monthly or weekly reconciliations to prevent recurrence.
