The Tennessee Comptroller Office says Dyer County Schools administrative staff wrongfully paid themselves more than $63 thousand in bonuses through federal dollars intended to provide COVID screening testing.
The bonuses were paid to seven administrative staff members in 2021, through the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases Grant (ELC). According to the Comptroller’s Dyer County Fiscal Year 2022 Audit, those bonuses include more than $27 thousand to the director of schools and nearly $12 thousand to the district’s Business and Finance Manager.
“We were not provided with adequate documentation to support these payments as direct costs. The services provided by the administrative staff do not appear to be integral to the ELC grant; the individuals were not specifically identified to the project; and the bonuses were not explicitly included in the budget, nor did they have prior written approval of the federal awarding agency,” wrote the Comptroller in the audit.
At the time the bonuses were awarded, the ELC grant was designed to provide funding for nurses, construction for testing locations, and other expenses to run mass testing programs.
Auditors also reported that these bonuses were not specifically approved by the board of education before they were awarded.
Board members did approve a budget amendment for bonuses seven months after the bonus payments were made, but the board didn’t receive a breakdown of who received a bonus and the individual amounts according to the report.
“It should be noted that the current chairman of the board of education advised that he was unaware the director of schools received amounts in excess of her contract. As a result, the director of schools authorized a bonus payment to herself without prior approval of the board of education,” wrote the Comptroller in the report.
Dyer County Schools Director Cheryl Mathis refuted the allegations that the bonuses were improperly approved. Mathis says the prior chairman of the board was supportive of the bonuses in 2021 and she says there’s nothing wrong with how the district awarded them.
“The approved budget for the grant expressly included bonus payments in the amount of $63,589.14 to the Administrators, Director, and other related personnel for duties and responsibilities related to the implementation and administration of the COVID Testing program,” wrote Mathis in response to the Comptroller’s audit. “When your office first raised this issue, we immediately confirmed that it was proper for ELC grant funds to be used to pay bonuses to the administrative staff for duties and responsibilities related to the implementation and administration of the program.”
Despite that explanation, state auditors say they still have not received any documented evidence that staff members who were awarded bonuses actually devoted their time to administering the grant.
“Without any supporting documentation of actual work performed on the grant by these individuals, we cannot attest these individuals were entitled to receive a bonus,” wrote auditors in the report.
