ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ

The new chairman of the Hawaii State Board of Education has promised audits of the board and Department of Education at nearly every public appearance since he was appointed in March.

But what Don Horner has not mentioned is that the department has undergone at least 32 audits in the past 10 years — or what they’ve revealed. He has, however, alluded to undertaking everything from simple policy audits of the board to full-fledged management and financial audits of the entire school system.

At the board’s inaugural meeting Tuesday, he began making good on those promises by establishing an audit committee with himself at the helm and Maui’s Wesley Lo as vice chair. The committee will look first at board policies, then at the department from virtually every angle — programs, offices and schools.

“Historically, audits have been viewed as us going out and finding all the problems,” Horner said. “In this case, we will not be identifying simply problems, but solutions. We will be looking for opportunities to help us be more productive and effective.”

Audits of the school system are a popular topic in the public dialogue, especially since last year when gubernatorial candidate and then-Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona proposed a comprehensive audit that, he said, would help clean up the Department of Education.

State Auditor Marion Higa criticized the idea at the time, saying a comprehensive audit of the 22,000-employee department would .

That does not mean, however, that the Department of Education has not been audited at all. In fact, the department has posted online at least eight annual . Those are complemented by a contracted by the state auditor, ranging from procurement and specific program audits to audits of local school funds¹.

In 2007, a third-party firm even performed a management and fiscal assessment of the department’s Office of Human Resources — the same office that Horner has told legislators is “so antiquated that those people are working very, very hard and not necessarily smart.”

The whole human resources audit is not available online, but , and they include:

1. The Office of Human Resources does not have standard operating procedures for its major functions.
2. Position descriptions are vague and outdated.
3. Organizational charts need to be updated.
4. The employee handbook lacks critical information.
5. The human resources office needs a formal policy or procedure for how it communicates with employees.
6. The school code needs an overhaul and should be maintained electronically/online to ensure all copies are up to date.

Each of the findings comes with a series of recommendations for solving the problem — a solution — and these have resulted in a series of follow-up meetings with the Board of Education.

The annual financial audits are more limited in scope, but the two most recent ones have found that:

1. The department lacks standardized procedures for making bank reconciliations and error corrections.
2. The department does not comply with state procurement in one out of 15 procurements.
3. The department is not recording compensated absences consistently, and is therefore overstating sick leave and vacation balances.

Horner declined to expand on his plans for the direction of his audit committee, saying in an email to Civil Beat, “I prefer to work through the audit committee, not media.”