Lorain Schools' performance audit focus causes confusion

LORAIN — A required performance audit of schools under state control has raised questions from Lorain Schools' administration and Board of Education. Under Ohio House Bill 110, which gave Lorain, Youngstown and East Cleveland schools a pathway out of academic distress, each district is required to receive a performance audit from the auditor of the state by June 30, 2025. But at Monday's school board meeting, questions arose as to what the audit would actually cover. Superintendent Jeff Graham said the district was originally under the impression the performance audit was going to look at the school's finances and compare its past spending to similar districts and their spending. Instead, he was told by the Ohio Department of Education that it was going to be an audit of the strategic plan, he said. School board member Mark Ballard questioned the change — noting the performance audit was based on a bill state Reps. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, and Michele Lepore-Hagan, D-Youngstown, had introduced in the House in early 2021. That bill, which was ultimately folded into the state's biennial budget that summer, required performance audits of the three districts similar to schools under fiscal distress — which includes reviewing programs or operations for financial efficiency. Graham said the Ohio Department of Education interpreted the language from the state budget differently. "They read it differently, they read it to assess the efficiency of our (strategic) plan and the quality with which we're implementing it," he said. An email seeking clarification from the Ohio Department of Education was not returned Tuesday. On Tuesday, Miller said the goal of the performance audit when he introduced his 2021 legislation was to see how funds were spent while each district was under the CEO/Academic Distress Commission model. "Here's the thing, a performance audit does examine if the funds are spent wisely and if the programs achieve their intended purposes … so there is a financial component to the performance audit and it is specifically to see if the money spent was getting its intended value," Miller said. "That's why I had a bill that said we want a performance audit on … all three schools." Miller said if the state auditor is not looking at the district's finances, just the programs, then the auditor is not doing what is the spirit of a performance audit. Miller said he wasn't sure if the audit would go back to previous CEOs, alleging the state doesn't want to "uncover what we all know is mismanagement" under the unchecked CEOs. There is little recourse for making sure the audit is done correctly, Miller said, arguing the Republican-controlled General Assembly and governor don't want the academic distress model to go away. "I don't expect anything to be done," he said. "I think it's just going to have to be whatever they find, they find, and then they're going to ask the school district to take the performance audit and implement it and I think the ODE is going to want to see them to do that." State Sen. Nathan Manning, R-North Ridgeville, said he'd also spoken to Graham about the issue and is in talks with the Ohio Department of Education and the state auditor's office to get clarification. "We don't want to make obstacles for these school districts, we want to help these school districts," he said. Auditor of the State Press Secretary Marc Kovac confirmed the auditor's office is handling the performance audits of Lorain, Youngstown and East Cleveland schools, and are not limited to each district's plan to exit state control. Those audits are broader than regular financial audits, he wrote in an email, with a focus on "increasing the economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and/or transparency of government entities and/or programs." Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.