Summary

Summary of Attestation Examination

Except for material noncompliance involving teachers, and students reported in ESE Support Levels 4 and 5, and Career Education 9-12 on-the-job training (OJT), and student transportation, as discussed below, the Palm Beach County District School Board complied, in all material respects, with State requirements regarding the determination and reporting of full-time equivalent (FTE) students under the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) and the number of students transported for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007.

• One hundred and eleven of the 643 teachers in our sample did not meet State requirements governing certification, School Board approval of out-of-field teacher assignments, notification of parents regarding out-of-field teachers, or the earning of college credits or in-service points in ESOL.

• We noted exceptions involving 105 of the 632 students in our sample for ESE Support Levels 4 and 5, and 334 of the 474 students in our Career Education 9-12 (OJT) sample.  These exceptions involved reporting errors or records that were not properly and accurately prepared or were missing and could not be located.

• Our examination procedures, which included general and detailed tests, disclosed material noncompliance involving the District’s reported student ridership.  Our general tests resulted in the disallowance of 5,694 reported students because of exceptions involving inadequate or missing documentation, and the incorrect reporting of PK students.  Our detailed tests found that 200 of the 449 students in our sample had exceptions involving their reported ridership category or eligibility for State transportation funding.

Noncompliance related to FTE resulted in 208 findings.  The resulting audit adjustments to the District's reported, unweighted FTE totaled to a negative 23.4851, but have a potential impact on the District's weighted FTE of a negative 756.3711.  Noncompliance related to student transportation resulted in 14 findings and a net audit adjustment of a negative 5,798 students.

Weighted FTE adjustments are presented in our report for illustrative purposes only.  They do not take special program caps and allocation factors into account and are not intended to indicate the weighted FTE used to compute the dollar value of audit adjustments, which is the responsibility of the Department of Education (DOE).   However, the gross dollar effect of our FTE audit adjustments may be estimated by multiplying the net weighted FTE audit adjustment by the base student allocation amount.  For the Palm Beach County District School Board, the estimated gross dollar effect of our FTE audit adjustments is a negative $3,011,575 (negative 756.3711 times $3,981.61).  We have not estimated the potential dollar effect of our student transportation audit adjustments because there is no equivalent method for making such an estimate.  The ultimate resolution of our FTE and student transportation audit adjustments and the computation of their financial impact is the responsibility of DOE.

School District of Palm Beach County

The District was established pursuant to Section 1001.30, Florida Statutes, to provide public educational services for the residents of Palm Beach County.  Those services are provided primarily to students attending kindergarten through high school, but also to adults seeking vocational-type training.  The District is part of the State system of public education under the general direction and control of the State Board of Education.  The geographic boundaries of the District are those of Palm Beach County.  The governing body of the District is the District School Board, which is composed of seven elected members.  The executive officer of the Board is the appointed Superintendent of Schools.  For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007, the District operated 234 schools, reported 169,477.07 unweighted, full-time equivalent (FTE) students, and received approximately $127 million in State funding for those FTE.

Florida Education Finance Program

Florida school districts receive State funding through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), which was established by the Florida Legislature in 1973.  It is the intent of the law "to guarantee to each student in the Florida public school system the availability of programs and services appropriate to his educational needs which are substantially equal to those available to any similar student notwithstanding geographic differences and varying local economic factors."  To provide equalization of educational opportunity in Florida, the FEFP formula recognizes (1) varying local property tax bases, (2) varying program cost factors, (3) district cost differentials, and (4) differences in per student cost for equivalent educational programs due to sparsity and dispersion of student population.  The funding provided by FEFP is based upon the numbers of individual students participating in particular educational programs.  A numerical value is assigned to each student according to the student's hours and days of attendance in those programs.  The individual student thus becomes equated to a numerical value known as an unweighted FTE (full-time equivalent student).  For example, one student would be reported as one FTE if the student was enrolled in six classes per day at 50 minutes per class for the full 180-day school year (i.e., six classes at 50 minutes each per day is five hours of class a day or 25 hours per week, which equals one FTE).

Student Transportation

The Superintendent's written response to the audit findings is included in the audit report.