Oberlin City School District

Per regulations at 7 CFR 245.6a(c)(1), by November 15th, Local Educational Agency?s (LEA) are to verify a sample of approved applications for free and reduced price meals each school year, unless the LEA is otherwise exempt from the verification requirement. The verification sample size is based on the total number of approved applications on file on October 1st. The District was required to verify five students? applications. As required, the District properly requested documentation from the five students. The District received one of the five verifications supporting documentations and upon review, the original determination remained unchanged. The other four did not return documentation as requested. The District properly noted such on the applications and documented the level of service change, to paid. However, the four verifications whose status changed were not updated in the District?s meals system. Four students received free or reduced benefits for the entire school year. This resulted in the District not receiving the entire amount had the students paid for those lunches and breakfast. This also resulted in the District overstating the free and reduced lunches and breakfast to the federal program for reimbursement in which they shouldn?t have benefitted from. We recommend the District implement additional internal controls to help ensure that results from the verification process are integrated into the District?s meals system timely.

For the current fiscal year, the District has handled the verification process correctly and will continue to monitor this in the future.