Open Recommendations

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We recommend that the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education require Tennessee, in consultation with the Governor of Tennessee, to review its policies and procedures for drawing down Department grant funds to pay for corresponding grant expenditures and determine whether any updates are necessary to ensure funds drawn down from one grant (for example, CRRSA EANS) are not being used to pay for expenditures under another grant (for example, ARP EANS).

We recommend that the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education require Tennessee, in consultation with the Governor of Tennessee, to ensure that Tennessee officials responsible for making, reviewing, and approving G5 drawdowns receive sufficient training on Federal rules and regulations and State policies and procedures related to drawing down funds from G5 and documenting the process correctly.

We recommend that the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education require Tennessee, in consultation with the Governor of Tennessee, to ensure full implementation of procedures that will identify, locate, and track assets purchased with EANS funds at nonpublic schools and verify that those assets were still being used for purposes related to COVID-19 or for allowable purposes under another Federal education program in which the nonpublic school participates. If assets purchased with EANS funds are no longer being used for purposes related to COVID-19 or for allowable purposes under another Federal education program in which the…

We recommend that the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education require Tennessee, in consultation with the Governor of Tennessee, to retroactively obtain prior written approval from the Department for the three equipment expenditures or return the approximately $123,000 expended for those equipment purchases and perform a review of the remaining equipment expenditures to determine whether there are additional purchases that require prior written approval. Tennessee should also incorporate into its grants management policies and procedures a step to determine for any Department grants whether it is required to obtain prior approval from the Department for certain…

The Council should update its contract templates to include the required information.

The Council should establish and conduct periodic internal reviews of its subawarding processes to ensure understanding of, and compliance with, Federal and NEA subawarding requirements.

The Council should document policies and implement procedures for subrecipient suspension and debarment that meet NEA guidelines

The Council should document policies and implement procedures and controls to ensure panelist conflicts of interest are identified and addressed.

The NEA should disallow the $1,800 in unsupported 2021 award costs.

NEA should disallow the $1,560 unallowable ARP activity costs from the 2020 award and determine whether a refund is due.

We recommend that the Peace Corps OCFO develops and documents a process for adopting and implementing new accounting standards and guidance going forward, including, but not limited to, the implementation of the embedded leases13 portion of SFFAS 54.

We recommend that the Peace Corps OCFO updates its policy to include all assumptions and used and the reasoning behind those assumptions.

We recommend that the Peace Corps OCFO determines what information needs to be captured at a transaction level to allow for the identification of the lease and the type of lease (escalating vs. non-escalating) at the disbursement transaction level.

We recommend that the Peace Corps OCFO updates its current lease calculation methodologies to better align with SFFAS 54 and to calculate the interest expense and interest payments.

We recommend that the Peace Corps Office of Management develops and implements a process to capture the information needed to identify a lease, to allow for automation of calculating, reporting, and disclosing required lease balances.