Report 2021-101 Recommendation 19 Responses

Report 2021-101: K-12 Strong Workforce Program: State and Regional Administrative Shortcomings Limit the Program's Effectiveness in Supporting Grant Applicants (Release Date: February 2022)

Recommendation #19 To: Central/Mother Lode Regional Consortium

To ensure that its selection committee follows safeguards designed to avoid unfair grant decisions, beginning with the fiscal year 2022-23 grant application period, the Central/Mother Lode Regional Consortium should maintain internal documentation demonstrating its review for selection committee members' potential conflicts of interest. This documentation should include a comparison of the entities that applied and the conflicts reported by each selection committee member. The consortium should also keep records showing that selection committee members did not review applications for which they had conflicts of interest.

1-Year Agency Response

In accordance with the audit recommendation, The K14 TAP, the Selection Committee chairs, and the Regional Chair kept maintained internal documentation to avoid unfair grant decisions occurred for the Central/Mother Lode Regional Consortium. This documentation included a conflict of interest and confidentiality form that all selection committee members had to agree to and submit before accessing the applications. Additionally, we tracked conflict of interests via an Excel sheet that required selection committee members to reveal conflicts and potential conflicts before they accessed the applications in NOVA. These records were maintained electronically and in print and have been sent to the auditor as proof of full implementation.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Fully Implemented

Based on documentation of the consortium's efforts to guard against potential conflicts of interest for its selection committee, we assessed this recommendation fully implemented.

6-Month Agency Response

The Central/Mother Lode Regional Consortium plans to develop a conflict of interest document that requires selection committee members to disclose potential conflicts for the FY of 2022-23 and plans to keep a separate document that ensures selection committee members do not review applications where a conflict of interest has been identified.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

The consortium's response does not specify whether it will maintain documentation demonstrating that it has compared the entities that applied and the conflicts reported by each selection committee member. We encourage the consortium to implement this key component of the recommendation and look forward to assessing its status at the one-year response point.

60-Day Agency Response

To ensure that the Central/Mother Lode Regional Consortium follows safeguards that avoids unfair grant decisions, it plans to develop internal documentation that requires selection committee members to disclose potential conflicts of interest that details a comparison of the entities that applied with a description of the types of conflicts reported by each selection committee member. Additionally, it will keep records that supports selection committee members did not review applications from which they had conflict/s of interest. The documentation and internal processes will be adopted by the end of May before the selection committee convenes to review round 5 of the K12 SWP applications.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

We look forward to reviewing the documentation of the Consortium's use of its new process in its next response to this recommendation.

All Recommendations in 2021-101

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.