At the request of a member of the Legislature, PEER staff audited actual teaching assignments of 277 selected public school teachers paid from Minimum Program funds. The purposes of this special audit were (1) to provide an explanation of the process used by the state Department of Education in preparing the Minimum Program budget request; (2) to determine discrepancies in source documents submitted to the department by the 151 school districts for obtaining Minimum Program funding; and (3) to explain the confusion surrounding the Minimum Program budget during the 1976 Session.
Based on its findings, the PEER Committee recommended that the Board of Education review this report and take appropriate action against the districts involved in teacher assignment discrepancies after consideration of the explanations of the superintendents involved and the opinions of the State Department of Education. The Committee also recommended that the Department of Audit include a review of reported teacher assignments in its annual post-audit of school districts. A similar review should be conducted by CPAs auditing the separate districts. Finally, if this were not possible, the Committee recommended hiring a special auditor and a small staff to make audits as requested by the majority of the Board of Education.
For a paper copy of this report, contact PEER by telephone at 601-359-1226 or by e-mail at reports@peer.ms.gov.