By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org

CONCORD — The Legislative Performance Audit Oversight Committee wants to look at how local public schools are handling their special education programs.

The committee Friday had a wide ranging discussion on how best to design an audit of several school districts to receive the information it seeks centered around coding.

The committee discussed the topic several years ago and eventually asked for a performance audit of the Department of Education and its oversight of its dispute resolution process, which was found to need significant changes.

At Friday’s meeting, Rep. Keith Erf, R-Weare, said he would like to see an audit of school districts’ special education programs.

“We’ve never looked at local school districts, which is where many of the issues are,” Erf said. “Is it possible to audit local school districts at some level so we understand how special education is working at the local district level?”

The Legislative Budget Assistant’s office has never done a non-government audit, audit division director Christine Young said, but is allowed to do five non-government audits in five years under the statutes.

Rep. Gerald Griffin, R-Mont Vernon, noted the ideal would be a district whose school board invited the LBA to do the audit.

Rep. Lucy Weber, D-Walpole, said the thought had crossed her mind as well but any district that invited an audit is probably not experiencing the issues they want to investigate.

There is a huge difference in auditing Manchester’s special education program than Roxbury’s, she noted.

Auditing just one school district is not likely to produce the information they are looking for additional study.

Erf said maybe they could do two audits, one from a large district and one from a small district.

They are looking for information on coding with the number of students growing tremendously, which is having a huge impact on budgeting, he said.

“It is not clear what is happening year to year,” Erf said, “but it is growing like crazy.”

He noted the performance audit of the DOE dispute resolution process does not address the fundamental issue of special education coding, which is parents’ concerns, both for excess and for the lack of coding.

He called it a black hole at the local school board level.

Rep. Ken Weyler, R-Kingston, said they could look at the top 10 schools for special education costs and students and have the chairs of House and Senate Finance send a letter to the superintendent seeking additional information.

“We need to know what is so out of balance with the rest of the state and the country,” he said. “This may get some answers back, maybe not, but it might be worth a try.”
This has escaped the notice of the public, Weyler said.

Weber said that would be an interesting approach particularly from a finance point of view, but from an educational point of view, those districts with low numbers may not be coding kids that ought to be coded.

“These are the kids that are lost in the shuffle some parents complain about,” she said. “It is important to know where we are at either way.”

She said it would be interesting to see where all the school districts rank for special education from top to bottom.

The committee will explore the topic further at its next meeting.

The committee also received a spreadsheet of the performance audits done over the last 10 years and whether the issues raised in the audits have been addressed.

Of the audits, state agencies and boards have not complied with any findings in 13 performance audits.

LBA Audit Supervisor Jay Henry said some boards may have lost track of audit compliance due to membership changeover which happens frequently with professional licensing boards for example.

Sen. Timothy Lang, R-Sanbornton, noted the Mental Health Workforce Licensing Board has not complied with any of the findings in that performance audit done in 2023.

He said they all agree the state has a mental health crisis and suggested the board’s chair come before the committee’s next meeting or send a written response on where the board stands.

Henry said a lot of the boards only meet once a month and it could take several months to get the information they are seeking, and Young noted compliance is voluntary, the agencies and department do not always agree with their findings and some issues raised are never implemented.

Henry said in some cases the boards or agencies have complied, but have not issued a report which needs to be posted on the state’s transparency website.

The committee agreed the chairman should send a letter to the chair of the mental health licensing board to appear at the committee’s next meeting in June.

At the committee’s last meeting in April, members were told the field work on the Education Freedom Account Audit had begun and would continue through the summer, but the one person who is responsible for oversight of the program resigned and has not been replaced which has slowed some of the work. The LBA was hopeful to have a draft report this fall and a presentation to the Fiscal Committee by the end of the year.

At Friday’s meeting the committee was told the staffing situation has not changed at the Department of Education.   

Before his departure, the program oversight administrator did a compliance audit of 50 applications to the EFA program in its first two years and found mistakes in 25 percent that resulted in the Children’s Scholarship Program — NH returning some grant money to the state.

However the scholarship program has declined to provide program data to the auditors for a full blown performance audit which will result in a performance audit of the department’s oversight of the program.

The scholarship fund claims it owns the data under the contract it signed with the state.

The Legislative Performance Audit Oversight Committee will meet again June 6 in Room 100 of the State House.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.