Hatchet Job of an Audit
Torn Apart One Section at a Time
Part II
State Idiot/Auditor Cindy Byrd Now Extorting
Other Agencies For Auditing Contracts
Last week we exposed the lies that Lying Cindy had told at her press conference and used in her hatchet job of an audit.
One was about the teacher retirement system payments and we included the actual emails proving exactly how Epic was instructed to report retirement pay to the system and exactly how to calculate the money owed to the retirement fund. There can be no doubt that Lying Cindy knew of these emails as her own employee acknowledge receiving the emails. There can be no doubt that not only did Lying Cindy lie about there being any controversy or issue with the retirement fund payments, she also lied about Epic not responding on the issue.
The second huge lie was Chapter 5 on the learning fund and how it was calculated. Again, we provided the actual contract pages and LEA forms where Epic had actually circled the numbers that were REQUIRED to be used by charter schools by the SDE and the State Charter School Board. Lying Cindy continues to claim this is a problem, something that needs “fixed”. Well Lying Cindy's job is to report if state law was not followed, not if she disagreed with state law. Once again the evidence absolutely proved that Lying Cindy was lying on this second point.
This week we are picking one more of the many inaccurate and out right deceitful allegations made in Lying Cindy's “audit”. The categories below are from Lying Cindy's own “audit” and the two already addressed are in green type. The one we will cover in this issue is in blue type.
Chapter 1 Accountability and Oversight
Chapter 2 Oklahoma Cost Accounting System
Chapter 3 Payroll
Chapter 4 Allocated Dues and Fees
Chapter 5 Student Learning Fund
Chapter 6 Community Strategies-CA, LLC
Chapter 7 Audits and Reviews
Chapter 8 Other Issues
Here is a link to the SAI, State Auditor and Inspector “audit”. Scroll down to page 15 through 22 for the discussion of Chapter 1, Accountability and Oversight.
You will find at the bottom of page 17 Part 1 a single complaint:
Chapter 2 of section 1 goes on to expand the complaint or justify it starting on page 18.
The first complaint is actually leveled at SDE, State Department of Education, who has partial oversight over Epic. Lying Cindy complains that while there is reporting and oversight, it is “desktop” reviews, no one actually goes down and counts the inventory and tallies the widgets. Guess what? That is pretty much the rule in public school oversight too. Lying Cindy admits that oversight is being done but not “true accountability”. Guess what Lying Cindy, the statutes do not require more than what SDE has already done.
The second complaint is leveled toward the Charter Sponsors, Rose State College and SVCSB, the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board. Lying Cindy first asked what sort of direct oversight, if any, was provided by Rose State College for the $3.5 million dollars they received from Epic for oversight.
If they are not fulfilling their duty and being paid for it wouldn't they be more likely to answer that question and be accountable for not doing their duty? Rose state replied that Epic sent over their annual financial audit each year and as there were no discrepancies and the audits appeared to be clean they requested no more information from Epic. Yah think? Lying Cindy goes on to make the point that Rose State College relied upon the audit firm opinion and had not verified the validity of the statements. Yah think? Pretty much every audit firm doesn't expect to be second guessed nor is anyone expecting a CPA firm to cover crap up as there would be massive consequences for doing so.
My God, you incompetent imbecile of an auditor. All agencies, banks, or companies that require audited financial statements are going to trust the damned CPA audit. CPAs can lose their license to practice if they are not honest, their firms can be sued into bankruptcy you damned fool. And your second sentence admits that there is no statute mandating going beyond a damned CPA financial audit. Once again Lying Cindy is complaining about how the laws are written, not that anyone ignored the law or broke the law.
SVCSB was taken to task next for taking $3.8 million for oversight and admits that many oversights are being done including use the OEQA, Oklahoma Educational Quality and Accounting agency, to collect academic performance and financial responsibility. They got off easy, probably because Lying Cindy has extorted a three year contract from the SVCSB to use the high price State Auditor to “fulfilling the oversight requirements of the Oklahoma Charter School Board.”. That's right boys and girls, you pay Lying Cindy enough money and you get a free pass.
Next up is Community Strategies, the Epic One on One School Board. Lying Cindy agrees that the board for both Epic and Blended have the same board members and separate meetings to keep the two school's business separate but she complains that the board members were not nominated by the public. Right, how is that a good thing? I would want learned and responsible board members, not popular people that people enjoy being around. Their complaint is that the board isn't independent. Well, you blithering idiot, change the state statute, which is probably what she wants, a way for teachers to infiltrate the charter school boards so they can ruin them.
The vast majority of the text and space used in the audit section on accountability is devoted to attacking the Epic School board, Community Strategies. First they take issue with only two meetings annually. That is all it ought to take once the direction of the school and contract are set. Then there are lots of complaints about the attendance figures of each board member. Here is a clue for you Miss State Idioter, there are quorum requirements for meetings. If they are met the meeting is held. So shut your stupid mouth or whine about the legislators that didn't require all board members to be present at board meetings. No other entity would or could hold meetings with those requirements.
Then our State Idioter complains that transactions were approved after the fact. It is called a contract for a reason you blithering idiot. As in a written down manner to pay or be paid or conduct business. This isn't a public school you moron.
Lying Cindy's conclusion on the Accountability chapter is below:
Well if the legislators, SDE, SVCSB, or any other agency had wanted the rules to be different on charter schools they would have written them different. We do not need a State Idioter coming in second guessing other elected officials' legislation. What the State Idioter ought to be doing is checking that the procedures follow EXISTING state law.
You can find Epic's response to the State Auditor during actual “audit” at this link. Look on the left upper corner and find the page number text box to quickly go down to the correct page shown below. The best way to follow this is to go down to the bottom of page 13, right below “A Note Regarding Oversight”
Their response tells of the CEBW CPA firm that does other school audits and the Oklahoma Public School Audit statute that lays out exactly what money is to be audited, the schools funds, not the outside entities that do contract work for the school. CEBW required that EYS, the management firm's 10% were not to be part of any audit as that was their contract fee for running the school. Not only did none of CEBW's audits find any problems, each audit was submitted to the State Idioters Office. Under the Oklahoma Public School Audit statute Lying Cindy was responsible for looking over the financial audit and finding any problems and submitting to the school board and outside audit firm a list of deficiencies.
And we learn that for the last eight years, the State Auditors Office has received these audited financial statements, reviewed them, and has not sent a single list of deficiencies back to the audit form or to Epic's school board. None of the EYS transactions or funds nor the Learning Fund's transactions or funds have EVER been included. Year after year, when our current State Idioter was the #2 girl to Gary Jones, never did she find any problems. Is she now saying she was negligent?
Epic's response as to the SDE oversight stated that 54 reviews have been conducted by the SDE concerning the Oklahoma Cost Accounting System coding in the past three years, that would be around one and a half reviews each month, every twenty days, and not one time has SDE found any problems. Probably because they told Epic how to code the various accounting transactions. Each year SDE has certified Epic and Blended Learning Centers as being compliant with all rules and regulations as they re certified the schools.
They addressed the sponsors' oversight, millions of dollars paid out by Epic to the SVCSB to audit and review the schools each and every year with both schools coming out with zero problems. Once again, how would this be Epic's fault if the two sponsors were not doing their responsibilities? But they were of course.
The Community Strategies Board, Epic's own school board, was explained in detail including the depth and breadth of experience brought by the board members. They far exceed those of the typical school board candidate that wins a popularity contest to be seated. And more telling, our current State Idioter never mentioned one statutory or regulatory responsibility that they missed.
BTW, boards generally will not interfere with the daily comings and goings of the company or organization they oversee. Boards tend to look at the direction and performance of the entity, big picture stuff, and they know better to micro manage the leadership of the entity. Lying Cindy likely never actually held a real job, most likely sucked on the public teat or rooted in the public trough for most of her working career. She would be ignorant of this I suppose. Or know and think she can lie about things and not be challenged is more likely.
Next week we will cover the driest subject of the “audit”, the Cost Accounting complaints.
