April 18 2015
The New York State Comptroller’s office has released an audit of Alfred-Almond Central School. The main criticism in the audit was that more employees than needed (who were BOCES employees who worked outside the school district) had access to the school’s business computer.
The state comptroller’s report noted that one of the employees changed her number of leave days, by increasing her sick days in 2013. “We also confirmed that the former District Treasurer attempted to manipulate her paid leave accruals by adding 60 unauthorized sick days valued at approximately $10,000,” the state comptrollers report stated. “District officials notified us at the onset of our audit that they had discovered through an informal review of leave records that the former District Treasurer attempted to manipulate her paid leave records. District officials corrected the leave records, and the former District Treasurer did not receive any undue benefit.”
Alfred-Almond School Superintendent Rich Calkins noted that he originally investigated that incident in 2013. Calkins also says the comptrollers did not come to Alfred-Almond until 2014.
Superintendent Calkins noted that at that time, he confronted the employee, who ended up resigning. This was confirmed by a school employee. “Tight controls helps keep everybody honest,” Calkins told WLEA News. He says the reason that the business office computer is housed at and run out of GST BOCES, is to prevent problems like what happened in 2013 from occurring again. The superintendent disagrees with the audit’s conclusion that it’s not a good policy to have officials outside of the school district checking the business computer.
Calkins says that was a decision that was made after the 2013 sick days incident, to prevent any staff members at Alfred-Almond, from improperly accessing the business computer. Calkins says it’s also more efficient to have a team of employees working on the business computer, as opposed to just one person.
