Auditor General finds education office’s financial reporting ‘insufficient’

A financial audit released earlier this month dinged the Regional Office of Education No. 3, which includes Bond, Fayette and Effingham counties.

The office’s duties, among other things, include issuing teachers’ licenses, monitoring school safety, training bus drivers, providing legal opinions on educational issues and assisting teachers’ planning for retirement, according to its 2015 annual report.

The district includes 11 public school districts as well as private and parochial schools.

The Auditor General’s report shows that the ROE “did not have sufficient internal controls over the financial reporting process” during the financial year ending on June 30, 2015. The problem, though new, constituted a “material weakness,” the audit stated.

“Internal controls over (generally accepted accounting principles) ... should include adequately trained personnel with the knowledge, skills and experience,” it said.

The Auditor General found that the ROE No. 3’s internal controls were “insufficient ... to record and present the pension information.”

Replying to the finding, the Regional Office said that “it was unable to complete the reports needed for the audit largely due to the timing of the receipt of needed documents from (the Teachers’ Retirement System and the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund).”

“We were all behind the eight-ball on the rules that came from GASB,” said ROE No. 3 Regional Superintendent Julie Wollerman, referencing the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, which had set new rules regarding pension paperwork.

The problem was that the new requirements came out right before the audit — too quickly for the regional office to assemble the right documents. A slowdown there had a ripple effect on the rest of the reporting process.

“‘Material weakness’... sounds awful,” she said.

Wollerman hasn’t spoken with the administrators at the retirement funds about next year yet, but she said the reporting process will go more smoothly then when both sides have determined a better reporting process.

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 7:53 AM with the headline "Auditor General finds education office’s financial reporting ‘insufficient’."