Other divisions within the department also can improve their performance to ensure that school districts and nonprofit organizations are held accountable for the proper use of state and federal funds. Due to ineffective program monitoring or enforcement by various divisions, the department has paid unsubstantiated claims to some organizations. Other organizations have even been guilty of fraud. The Bureau of State Audits and the USDA have cited instances of this nature in previous audit reports. Additional problems exist.
Some divisions fall short of the number of program reviews they are required to conduct annually.
For instance, despite state regulations requiring it to review nonprofit organizations every three years, the Child Development Division schedules such reviews only every four years. The divisions also do not keep adequate records of their review procedures, limiting assurance that entities receiving funds have met all regulatory requirements. Most importantly, staff do little to ensure that the organizations take corrective action or face sanctions when deficiencies are discovered. For instance, rather than making on-site visits to verify that school districts and nonprofit organizations have resolved deficiencies satisfactorily, reviewers in some divisions commonly accept written statements from these organizations stating they have corrected the problems. They also rarely impose sanctions on school districts that fail to correct deficiencies within the required time.