Audit finds manual pay‑band and stipend controls; FCPS plans December HCM rollout to address gaps

Monia Schwab of the Office of Audit and Compliance presented findings on June 15 that the district’s hourly pay and stipend processes rely on decentralized, manual HR‑11 forms and lack consistent secondary review. Auditors identified three findings: (1) pay‑band assignment and application errors where HR‑11 descriptions were insufficient to justify differing pay bands for similar duties; (2) homebound/home‑based teacher‑hour verification shortcomings—auditors could not always confirm that family verification emails matched paid hours and found instances of payments exceeding regulatory weekly limits; and (3) stipend vulnerabilities, including lack of verification that stipends tied to active activities, examples of consolidated payments (one payment covering six department chairs) and instances of staff receiving seven or more stipends totaling up to about $13,000 in a school year.

Schwab told the committee auditors tested samples and found discrepancies between HR‑11 authorizations and entries in the payroll system ("myTime"), and recommended shifting manual workflows to electronic system controls, creating a secondary review for HR‑11 forms and establishing e‑workflow and verification protocols for stipends. "We recommend establishing a monitoring framework and a secondary review process," Schwab said.

Committee members pressed for details on how electronic verification could work for event‑based work (for example, interpreter coverage at evening events) and on whether observed pay‑band differences could be valid (for experience, language or level). Schwab said the audit examined process controls rather than individual justification and that documentation provided did not support different pay bands for the same HR‑11 description in several samples.

A committee member cited aggregate payment figures during the Q&A—approximately $28 million for hourly pay, $1.5 million for homebound/home‑based teachers and roughly $80 million for stipend payments—and asked whether the upcoming HCM tool could reduce the need for added headcount for verification. FCPS staff said Phase 1 of the MyPath human capital management (HCM) tool will begin in December and will host payroll processes and allow rule‑based controls (for example, preventing payments outside pay‑band rules). Audit staff said they will validate HCM capabilities during audit follow‑up and recommended a demo during the next review.

Auditors and staff agreed management concurred with findings and that remediation tasks will be tracked; the committee asked that follow‑up include evidence that the HCM rules and second‑review processes effectively address the identified risks.