Texas Education Agency’s Administration of the Temporary Emergency Impact Aid for Displaced Students Program

We determined that Texas’s system of internal control over displaced student count data did not ensure that the data provided to the Department were accurate and complete because it did not always prevent or detect inaccurate displaced student counts reported by LEAs. The displaced student count data for the three LEAs that we reviewed were inaccurate and incomplete. As a result, Texas reported inaccurate displaced student count data to the Department for school year 2017–2018, and its Emergency Impact Aid program grant allocations to these three LEAs were incorrect. We estimate that $10.55 million of the $23.1 million in Emergency Impact Aid program funds that the three LEAs received was not supported because of the inaccurate and incomplete displaced student count data. We also determined that Texas’s system of internal control over LEAs’ use of Emergency Impact Aid program funds did not ensure that (1) LEAs accounted for Emergency Impact Aid program funds received for students reported as children with disabilities in accordance with Federal requirements and (2) LEAs used Emergency Impact Aid program funds to pay salaries only for employees who supported schools with displaced students. We identified about $1.94 million in unsupported costs for students reported as children with disabilities at the three LEAs we reviewed and $750,088 in unsupported costs for employees who worked at schools for which no displaced students were reported at two of the three LEAs we reviewed.