Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Audit Committee Meeting, Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 21m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0sRBtRFpsg
Official School Board page (FCPS): https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/leadership/school-board

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-27. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:59] you how are we doing janet on virtuals okay that's right we have four yes okay

[00:01:15] great miss miss Henderson and miss Marin we're gonna get started okay so this August 25 2026 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board Audit

[00:01:51] Committee will now come to order miss st. John Cunning has submitted a request to attend today's meeting virtually due to a medical reason is located in Alexandria Virginia okay in that case we will now move forward with item 1.02 the approval of minutes we will approve the minutes meeting minutes from the June 16 2026 audit committee meeting do I have a motion mr. moon second miss Marin so that is that motion is that the audit committee will approve the minutes from the June 16 2026 meeting with leave for the clerk to correct any formatting

[00:02:26] technical or grammatical errors all those in favor that is unanimous for those in the room next we'll be moving on to item 1.03 Office of Auditor General fiscal year 2027 Audit Committee kickoff I call on General Koh to present that item so good afternoon everyone so welcome to the first school year audit committee and thank you for Chairman Ryan to get us started. So today we would have a pretty short public meeting and we will spend some time to go over the

[00:03:05] kickoff presentation for those who are maybe watching online that we have the documentation on board docs. So it's a document that that talks about like who we are, what we do, our mission, et cetera and et cetera. So with that that on the if the clerk can pull that up thank you so much and I probably I could not see that in front of me so I would just miss then if you can let me know okay so first of all I want to talk a little bit about the OAG mission which is on slide number two there's a policy one one zero five that talks about the

[00:03:44] auditor general authority and to sum up what you've seen on the screen essentially what we are doing is the Office of the Auditor General, OAG, is responsible to audit the ongoing processes at Fairfax County Public Schools to ensure that it is efficient, effective, and be fully accountable to our community members. And as you all know that that we report to the school board through the audit committee, which are you all here today, and we are independent of the administration and we have the authority to look into all

[00:04:22] FCPS schools and programs and then annually we provided a work plan which include the audit topics that we would like to look at and then we first propose it at the audit committee and once the audit committee concurred and then it will be presented to the school board so I'm very glad to say that that the fiscal year 27 plan has been approved in July and in appendix one of this document also include the details job description of the auditor general job in case if you are wondering a little bit more and slide three we go on to talk about the

[00:04:59] things you need to know about OAG normally we like to bring the entire auditor audit teams here today you see mr. now more deputy auditor general and and also Mr. Luke Robertson, our senior auditor here.

[00:05:16] We all together have seven auditors, and we have one admin. And then within the auditors that we have, we have a whole different industry credentials, of course, including certified public accountants, including CIA.

[00:05:31] CIA is not the special agent, but this is the certified internal auditors. We also have CFE, certified fraud examiners, et cetera. And we follow the government auditing standards, so which is of a high standard that that government agency need to follow, and we choose to follow this standard in OAG.

[00:05:51] And of course, we looked at schools which are our bread and butter. We also looked at the process audits across the school districts. And at OAG, we adopt a holistic approach. And I'm going to talk about the holistic approach in the next page. At the office, we adopt a four pillars approach to do our work.

[00:06:12] And the first one is risk assessment, meaning how do we come up with the audit topics to look at. The second one is the internal audits, like all the audits that we do. And then we also maintain a hotline. And I want to say a thank you here for all the school board members and also the community members who help us to spread the word, right, that a hotline exists and people can use it to report on potential fraud, waste, and abuse concern.

[00:06:38] And then last but not the least is the outreach and education. So with that, moving on to talk a little bit about risk assessment. Like I said, it determined what to audit. It includes two different processes. And the first one is about the ID, to identify, and then also to prioritize what to look at.

[00:06:59] In order to do it, we actually already started already for fiscal year 28. Even though we just started fiscal year 27, We have started requesting information from school board members and also audit committee members. So thank you for those of you who have already spoken with me about what you have in your mind for next year audit topics.

[00:07:18] And we will also continue to interview leadership teams and employees. We will look at the financial data. We will also do benchmarking, meaning looking at our neighboring school district, looking at the top 10, top 15 school districts in the US about what topics are they looking at.

[00:07:35] We will also looking at the previous audit results and our inquiries results as well and then we will determine the plan and then moving on to our bread and butter which is the internal audit and we can pause for a second on slide number six which include all the audits that the board has approved if I may start saying that that we already in the process of wrapping up our local school activity funds June 30th 26 audits which we have just started working together with the comptroller office to look at how schools are managing the local school activity fund we also have the

[00:08:12] contract specific contracts audit that we are in the process of you know wrapping up is for fiscal year 26 we have looked into the instructional services department as well as the Department of Special Services and then looking forward we we have already started planning for the specific contract for this fiscal year and the focus of the review will be on the Department of information technology contracts and then we will be starting also the fundraising activities soon and then we also have athletic programs which will we will focus on the financial transactions as well as the continuous

[00:08:52] background and professional verification audits which will be starting soon and then at the bottom of the slide you can see that there are some annual audits business process audits are deep dive audits into schools and then we will also do continuous monitoring in schools as well and then if you are wondering hey Esther I want to find out more about the objective and what you're going to look at for the audits on this slide we have include in appendix to the details if you're interested to find out more and then on slide 7 it talks about some of our other duties and in addition to the audits maybe I just want

[00:09:31] highlight a few here that we have been really focused on outreach and education we know that that especially the budgets are tight for the upcoming year so internally at OAG we have been offering almost every quarter trainings that is certified by National Association of State Boards of Accountancy meaning that if you join the training you will earn a certificate that if you have a CPA or or any certification, you can actually use it towards your professional development requirements.

[00:10:06] So if I can do a plug here, I would encourage you all, if you're interested to join our training, let us know. We normally get about 200 people sign up every quarter, and then of course maybe like about 100 or 150 employees show up at the end.

[00:10:25] So it's a great training, it's like three hours, So you get really some substantive learning out from it. And then I also want to say a big thank you to Dr. Reed and the management team to allow me to present at the leadership kickoff so that I can have some time, face time, with the school-based administrators.

[00:10:44] And then I also want to say thank you to CIMR, our comptroller, to allow me to present at the finance tech training so that I can have some time to talk to the finance tech the finance assistants at all the schools across the district so thank you and then I also invite myself to some of the associations meeting so that they can learn more about OAG. With that we can move on to talk about slide 8. We have a theme within OAG and especially about the fraud, waste and abuse review to say to say this see something say something. You may see a big orange

[00:11:24] poster in the school break rooms or here at the gatehouse to really encourage our employees and our community members to use this hotline or the online submission form so again for those who are watching this committee online and there is like a hyperlink included on this slide about the online submission and we takes all the increase very seriously and then according to the relevant policy and regulation this is one of my outreach question I ask a lot what is the hotline number and I you have the answer in front of you so I

[00:12:01] really encourage us all really to spread the word so that people know they can use this method to report concerns so that we can resolve an issue before it becomes an issue and on slide 8 is 9 10 is show the statistics across the year from fiscal year 22 up until now to 26 breaking out by types so you can see that we got different categories of cases come in and I'm very happy to say that that the cases about things that are not related to fraud ways and abuse is actually declining or remain steady when the total caseload has increased has

[00:12:41] been increased and you may notice that that the cases with use of assets have been on the increase and I did take a look at you know the details of the 33 cases for example what do they entail they are mostly cases concerning the use of time meaning are people really working the full contracted hours that they have with FCPS do they work on non-contracted related items and then the second piece of this use of SS cases about use of funding that we have assigned to school, et cetera.

[00:13:16] And then when I think about why there is a decrease, I think likely it's because of the very aggressive promotion that we have done at all the schools, and people really take note of this method to report. And then I also looked at the amount of reportable category.

[00:13:34] And as you can see at the bottom, there are the reportable cases, meaning the cases that I would bring to the audit committee attention, And those cases that can be credible evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse, or situations that are concerning kind of like higher level employees, such as leadership team, et cetera, and those situations will be brought forward to the audit committee and then to the school board.

[00:13:58] And you can see that the share of the reportable cases at a high level is on the increase. So I really think that the hotline really provide a good way for people to use and then to contact us to report concern. And then we can work together with the employees to really to prevent an issue from happening.

[00:14:20] And people always ask me, right, Esther, you are doing audit that you are supposed to find out all the fraud and all the ways and abuse cases. And normally my answer will be, if I can see that crystal ball, you won't see me here today. I will be making a lot of money somewhere else.

[00:14:38] But I think together with this holistic approach people come to us when they see things that are not quite working right is really making our pro our whole office is effective as possible and then I'm going to us kind of like the last kind of few slides so please bear with me and then I am on slide 10 and it talks about the outreach and education and I'm very happy to report that last fiscal year we have delivered 20 presentations to over 2,000 FCPS employees and then also with some external state holders, too.

[00:15:17] And you may wonder who are the external state holders that I actually hosted a DMV auditor group that I invited local auditors from Loudoun, from Fairfax County, from Alexandria, from Arlington to have this place that we can share best practices and what we learned from our recent audits.

[00:15:39] So we are meeting with them, like I said, on a quarterly basis. And then moving towards the audit bus, that if you haven't signed up, I highly encourage you to sign up. We recently have about 3,500 subscribers, and I also want to say a big thank you to Danelle, because she is the one who helped me to get this one out so that you all can get updates about audits.

[00:16:03] So normally we send it out after the audit committee to summarize kind of the key takeaways from the audit committee and also some of the upcoming trainings that we offer to our employees. So with that the last slide, slide 11, is some of our resources. I know that we're all in the high-tech age now so we just link everything. Feel free to get into it and and my last comment I want to make is I think I have said that in the last meeting in June, OAG of course stands for the Office of Auditor General

[00:16:38] general and I think it can also stand for one amazing group so I really encourage you all in this journey with us we are all one amazing group and we are all working together to be the steward you know for our financial and our processes so with that I would like to hand the time to the chairman wonderful Thank You General Koh for that wide review of your work which is much appreciated. I open the floor now for questions or comments from our committee

[00:17:12] members. Ms. Marin, yes. Yeah I just want to say hello and I'm delighted to be joining the committee for the first time in seven years. I did not know that the newsletter was right after the committee so I'm already learning things so thank you very much. Yes, Mr. Moon. So how do we audit OAG whether it's doing it is in in its most effective way and efficient way.

[00:17:46] - Thank you for the question, Mr. Moon. I did not plan for it, but I think that's a great question for us to, you know. Answer is that per the government auditing standard, we are required to be peer reviewed every three years.

[00:18:02] So how does it work is that we will get someone from outside of Fairfax and they will come in, and Ms. Moore can talk a little bit more about that. As a matter of fact, we received two auditors in January.

[00:18:17] I remember it was the week when it snowed a lot, and the office was closing. So Danelle and I have been risking our lives a little bit, but I think that's like an overstatement. But then we came in and then to work with them.

[00:18:32] And then as a result of that review, we got a, I would like to say is a grade A. Grade A meaning what? Meaning that we passed with no deficiency identified. So I hope that by doing this independent peer review, according to the government auditing standard, can also hold OAG to a high standard.

[00:18:54] - As a follow-up, thank you. Thank you for sharing that information. It's not that I didn't know that, but I just wanted you to share with us again. But as a follow-up, among the large school districts in the US who has an office similar to OAG, How many offices failed to have that rating of A?

[00:19:19] - I haven't done that research. I remember you have similar interests before, Mr. Moon, like about what is the rate of pass with no deficiency. Let me go back to do some homework. Most of them should be available publicly if the audit organizations they chose to.

[00:19:40] So I can check and then we pop back. - Okay, thank you. - Thank you. thank you so much anything else from anyone okay seeing or hearing nothing else we will now move to make a motion on August 25th 2026 to go into closed meeting to one discuss personnel matters pursuant to section 2.2 3711 a 1 of the code of Virginia and to consult with legal counsel regarding specific matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel pursuant to section 2.2

[00:20:18] 3711 a7 and a8 of the code of Virginia specifically a personnel matters do I have a motion moved by mr. moon seconded by miss Marin all those in favor that is unanimous for those present Janet I don't do I adjourn the public meeting okay this public meeting is now recessed at 4:20 p.m. and the board will now meet in closed session

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