ANDERSON COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT ONE

CONDITION: Anderson County School District One (the “School District”) made two procurements during the fiscal year with federal funds for which it failed to obtain three quotes as required by its procurement code. This was discovered during the Single Audit of the IDEA program. CRITERIA: The School District’s procurement code requires three written quotes to be obtained for most procurements above $10,000 and below $25,000. For procurements above $25,000 and below $100,000, the purchase should generally be advertised and three written quotes, bids or proposals obtained. CONTEXT AND EFFECT: Non-payroll expenditures under the IDEA program during the fiscal year totaled $437,489 and included 252 purchases. Of these purchases, 6 purchases exceeded $10,000 and totaled $173,149. Of these, one purchase of phonetics educational materials for $66,100 was considered a key item for Single Audit testing purposes. An informal committee of School District personnel determined certain materials offered by a vendor best suited the needs of the School District’s special needs students. Additionally, these materials were needed for its extended school year program, and it was necessary to expedite the purchasing of these materials to receive them by the start of the program. To expedite the process and because a suitable vendor had been identified offering the materials at a reasonable cost, three written quotes were not obtained. The remaining non-payroll expenditures were tested for Single Audit purposes by the selection of a sample of 43 items totaling $73,574. Out of this sample, one purchase for $11,128 did not have the three written quotes as required by the School District’s procurement code. The purchase of educational materials was initiated at the school level with each school submitting a purchase request. Although the individual purchase requests fell below the $10,000 threshold, when combined, then total order exceeded the $10,000 threshold, and thus the order should have been advertised and three written quotes should have been obtained. CAUSE: For the key item noted above, the purchase was not initiated with enough time to allow for the solicitation of three written quotes prior to when these materials would be needed. For the sample item note above, the School District failed to recognize that the individual purchase requests represented portions of an order that when aggregated required three written quotes. RECOMMENDATION: The School District should ensure that all purchases over the School District’s procurement code small purchase threshold of $10,000 are properly procured in compliance with the procurement code and federal procurement requirements. RESPONSE: The School District agrees with this finding and will adhere to the corrective action plan on page 108 in this report.