ASBO New York Work Group on Uniform Grant Guidance

ASBO New York is forming a work group that will develop a template to assist New York State school districts in complying with federal uniform grant guidance. This is in response to recent concerns expressed by the federal government that New York State school districts are not in compliance with new federal requirements. These include areas such as maintenance of effort, conflict of interest, mandatory disclosures, contract provisions including contracting with small and minority businesses, and complying with financial and program management standards. Although the focus has been on IDEA 611 school age special education grants, the standards apply to many other federal grants as well.

ASBO New York is seeking a small number of volunteers to participate on this work group. Desired participants include:

• Auditors of New York State public school districts with backgrounds in auditing special education grant programs and familiarity with federal audit standards and
• School business officials from school districts in a variety of locations and sizes that may be deemed ‘high risk’ by auditors; these school districts might have large school age special education grants and some history of audit exceptions for compliance with uniform grant guidance.

The work group will be chaired or co-chaired by Richard Cunningham, Assistant Superintendent for Business at Plainview-Old Bethpage School District. It is expected that the Work Group will meet once in person at the ASBO office in Albany and two to four times by phone. Participants will be asked to review materials and give feedback. It is expected that the result will be a template that complies with state and federal standards by June.

If you wish to participate, please provide the following to dcunningham@asbonewyork.org :

• Name
• Position
• Organization
• Experience with uniform grant guidance (if auditor)
• District type and experience with federal audits (if school district)
• Need/resource capacity category (if district)
• Region of the state (if district)
• Size of district (if district)
• The reason for your interest (all)