LINCOLN — The Nebraska State Auditor has taken to task a southwest Nebraska school district for what he views as an improper use of nearly $125,000 from a student nutrition fund to help buy a pair of “massive video scoreboards” installed in the school gym.
Thursday, Auditor Mike Foley described the purchase by the Chase County School District as a “direct violation of the guidance issued to the school district from the Nebraska Department of Education” on how to use a surplus from the nonprofit school food account.
“All in all, the school district acted improperly in this expenditure and used sleight-of-hand tactics with the NDE to make an extravagant expenditure on gymnasium equipment using federal child nutrition dollars,” Foley said in a news release related to a letter issued Thursday to the school district.
School District Disagrees
A response from a law firm representing the school district was included in the audit team’s findings. It said the Chase County district was confident it “appropriately and transparently” purchased the video display boards after consulting with the NDE, and was “heartened” that its regular annual auditor agreed.
The law firm said that while the boards are used for sports, they also display nutritional information. It said the district has a long-standing practice in which students line up on the walking track of the gym, where the boards communicate nutrition information to students on their way to the cafeteria.
Snapping back further, the law firm called it “unfortunate” that Foley’s office spent public resources toward an inquiry spurred “solely for the private gratification” of a “disgruntled” school board member.
Of the audit team’s letter, the law firm said: “It reflects a lack of knowledge of the practices of Chase County Schools and an assumption of bad faith that is as unwarranted and inappropriate.”
However, the district response did say the school district was ready to take corrective action if directed to do so by either the Nebraska Department of Education or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Foley said he has referred his team’s findings to the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office and to the State Department of Education for further review of possible misappropriation of public funds or violations of federal regulations.
He recommended that the school district work with state education officials to determine how much money should be returned to the school nutrition account.
The State Department of Education and the Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a reporter’s query on whether, or how, they might pursue the matter.
Back and Forth
The state audit team’s criticisms — and a lengthy response from school district lawyers — were included in the 14-page letter addressed to Karl Meeske, board president of Chase County Schools.
The issue dates back to a Feb. 15 letter from the State Department of Education to Chase County school officials, noting that the nonprofit food service account exceeded its allowable amount of cash resources.
The NDE offered examples of ways to spend the excess, including improving the quality of meals and introducing new or improved salad bar options. It gave a deadline to submit a plan.
Adam Lambert, district superintendent, subsequently sent a letter listing items that the district was considering, including new lunch tables, kitchen appliances and a digital menu board.
The district’s Board of Education later voted to approve new display boards for the Longhorn gym.
The audit team said that neither board minutes nor the agenda specifies that Lambert planned to use excess school nutrition funds for the scoreboards.
Furthermore, the audit team said that it emailed the State Department of Education to ask specifically if the department would have approved using the excess funds to replace gym scoreboards, not located in the cafeteria, with two new 16-foot-by-9-foot LED scoreboards, including annual software and support for sports apps.
According to the audit team, the response was: “Absolutely not.”
The district’s lawyers said it understood otherwise from the NDE and that the purchase of display boards “to be used in part for the lunch program was an appropriate use of school lunch funds to the extent that the district reasonably appropriated their use for that purpose to the funds.”