Not diligently pursuing criminal background checks on child care workers, keeping federal funds away from the state’s general fund, and allowing unauthorized access to critical child care management systems—these are among the findings released last week in an audit of the Maryland State Department of Education conducted by the state’s Office of Legislative Audits, Maryland Reporter.com reports.
An audit has found that some unauthorized people had access to vital record systems.
Specifically, the audit suggests that MSDE should do more to ensure that all child care employees are recorded in the state’s system and undergo required criminal background checks and subsequent criminal monitoring. “MSDE did not ensure criminal background checks were obtained for all child care facility employees, and the results of such checks indicating necessary follow-up were not always pursued,” the audit report claims.
This claim is supported by evidence that two of the nine child care workers in the system checked by auditors apparently had never undergone the initial required background check. In one other case, it was reported that the state did conduct the initial background check but never documented that it had occurred.
Furthermore, “user access to the Child Care Administration Tracking System (CCATS) was not adequately restricted to only those individuals requiring access to perform their jobs and to prevent the recording of improper transactions.” That is, people had access to the system who shouldn’t have had access, and they might have—I’m not saying they did, but they might have—doctored records in the system as a way of hiding wrongdoing.
In addition to CCATS access, too many people, auditors claim, some of whom were no longer employees, had access to the child care subsidy tracking system during the audit period, July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2014. This is the system that controls the payment of subsidies from child care funds in the state’s control.
The audit also raised several concerns about $12 million of federal funds that state law says should have been sent back to the state’s general fund but that MSDE never released. This may have cost the state more than $100,000 in interest, but MSDE has disputed this finding. The saga will continue, but as for the CCATS access, MSDE says it has closed that loophole in such a way that after August 31, 2015, no unauthorized access was possible.