Center Moriches district flagged for $100G in tutoring, sports payments, comptroller's office says
Center Moriches High School Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
The Center Moriches school district approved time sheets that employees submitted for working at athletic events that had conflicting game times or on dates when no games were scheduled, state auditors found.
Those employees were among 13 whose time sheets were found to be not "adequately supported," according to a report from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office. The payments, which were also made for tutoring services, totaled more than $100,000.
Auditors raised questions on “the reasonableness of payments for 258 chaperoning and sports scorekeeping events totaling $14,190 due to various discrepancies with game schedules,” according to the report released last week but announced publicly on Thursday. It was based on an audit that covered the period from July 2022 through March 2024.
The discrepancies in time sheets submitted by eight employees included overlapping game schedules that would have meant the employees attended two games at the same time at different locations, dates when no games were scheduled, or time sheets that indicated multiple tournaments on the same date and location, the report said.
In one case, the district approved time sheets from one employee who did not indicate which sporting events they worked or the dates and times of those events, according to the report. This employee asked to be paid $1,155 for chaperoning for 21 sporting events over three weeks in February 2023. Auditors, who reviewed game schedules for the same period, determined the employee would only have been able to work at seven events.
The comptroller's office recommended the district establish "comprehensive written payroll processing policies."
Center Moriches schools Superintendent Ricardo Soto did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. In a letter to the comptroller’s office, he said corrective measures were implemented and the district is developing a payroll processing policy to be adopted.
“The report supports our continuing efforts to protect the district’s financial integrity,” he wrote in the June 26 letter. “The change in the time sheets will help ensure that employees are receiving payments for time actually worked.”
A district official told state auditors that the “deficiencies” related to the sporting events' time sheets were detected when officials were developing the 2023-24 budget and reviewed by internal auditors, according to the report.
As a result, the report said, the district began requiring the time sheets to include the event time and a printout of the Section XI schedule to confirm the employee’s attendance.
Tutoring time sheets questioned
The state auditors also reviewed time sheets for tutoring services the district provided to students out sick or on out-of-school suspensions. They found five employees with 1,096 tutoring hours not “adequately supported.” The payments totaled $60,283.
In some cases, the staffers turned in time sheets that did not contain student or parent signatures, the report said.
In one other case, the report said the sheets included time before the teacher’s workday ended. Tutoring is typically provided outside a teacher’s regularly assigned work schedule.
District officials said the employee would work through their lunch break and end their assigned workday earlier to tutor a student at an earlier time due to transportation logistics. Auditors noted that such information was not documented.
“Without proper documentation of the tutoring services provided, District officials cannot be sure that employees are being compensated properly and that students are receiving the needed services,” the auditors wrote.
District officials told the auditors they recognized the deficiencies in its manual time sheet process and began requiring additional information at the start of the 2024-25 school year. According to the report, the district staff "were notified that incomplete time sheets would be returned and payments delayed," and that included the required parental signature for tutoring time sheets.
Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.
