Sloppy Bookkeeping, Errors, Plague School Stimulus SpendingDOE alerts school districts about monitoring results for more than $1.6 billion in federal funds
The 2009 federal stimulus money for schools is almost all spent by now in New Jersey, but it’s still drawing attention from state monitors and raising questions as to how it was spent.
Acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks last month sent an alert to districts on the findings that have arisen in the state’s monitoring of more than $1.6 billion in federal aid distributed to districts in 2009 - 2010.
The monitoring is ongoing, with the state so far releasing local reports on about half of the more than 80 districts being monitored, including most recently Newark. The selected districts represented about 60 percent of the overall stimulus funds disbursed.
Accounting Errors
And while there appeared few instances so far of any alleged wrongdoing, there were plenty of examples of sloppy bookkeeping and other accounting errors with funds distributed under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), according to Hendricks’ alert.
For instance, one of the centerpieces of the ARRA money was for it to be used to retain school jobs, but Hendricks said nearly half of the districts failed to properly account for which specific jobs