Statement from Batavia City School District Superintendent Jason Smith in Response to the New York State Office of the Comptroller Audit Report
Link to the report below:
“Today, the New York State Office of the Comptroller, Division of Local Government and School Accountability, released an audit report addressing the Batavia City School District’s Information Technology (IT) Equipment Inventory based on findings from July 1, 2018, through February 8, 2022.
The report found that during this time period, the district did not adopt a comprehensive policy for establishing and maintaining IT inventory, did not maintain an accurate IT inventory, and could not locate 229 computers, 62 tablets, and paid approximately $17,000 in annual service fees in the 2021-22 fiscal year for the missing devices.
Since arriving in the district in early 2022, I have been brought up to speed with our current issues, and I take the findings in this report very seriously. The administration and I take full responsibility for the errors outlined in this audit and are taking appropriate corrective action steps to mitigate the problem and ensure a comprehensive policy is followed going forward. These steps include:
- We have engaged a third-party company specializing in IT services to conduct an assessment of our entire IT department, including our inventory and staff.
- Our internal team has taken the results from the audit and gone above and beyond to reduce our BOCES service charges by purging and returning unused inventory.
- We are working closely with the Board of Education to adopt a comprehensive written policy for establishing and maintaining controls to track and inventory our IT equipment.
While there is no excuse for the results found during this audit, we do recognize that the turnover in BCSD administration and our IT department since 2019 contributed to and compounded our IT management issues. Once we have completed the assessment from the third-party company, we will plan to implement their recommendations across the district.
As a result of this audit, one of my top priorities is to return our IT department to good standing and set our team up with a process to ensure these mistakes don’t occur in the future.
I understand there may be further questions surrounding this report. Please feel free to reach out to me directly at jasmith@bataviacsd.org.
Thank you for your understanding. We can and will do better going forward.”
-Jason A. Smith
Superintendent, Batavia City Schools