For the seventh year in a row, the Florida Auditor General reported no major findings in its annual operational audit of Step Up For Students, the nonprofit scholarship funding organization that administers scholarships for low-income students, bullied students, and those with special needs.

The 2020-21 operational audit examined the period between March 2020 and February 2021, which covers both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.

During this period, Step Up For Students paid $610.1 million in Florida Tax Credit Scholarships (FTC); $338.9 million for the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES); $134 million for the Gardiner Scholarship; $2.5 million for the Hope Scholarship; and $2.1 million for the Reading Scholarship.

Funds for the FTC and Hope Scholarship were raised through private contributions, while funds for the FES, Gardiner and Reading programs were funded through state appropriations.

As with past audits, student accounts were randomly selected to determine if Step Up For Students followed administrative rules regarding student eligibility. Payments from the Reading Scholarship and Gardiner Scholarship also were examined to determine if reimbursements were eligible under the law. Auditors did not report any errors regarding student or reimbursement eligibility.

Auditors questioned staff access to sensitive personal information that Step Up For Students collects to determine student eligibility, but the report did not note any instances of unauthorized disclosure of this information.

In its reply to the auditor general’s office, the organization replied that students often return to the program, and staff members who review scholarship applications for student eligibility must have access to historical data. Step Up For Students stated that it is working on an upgrade to the application database that will limit the number of staff members who can review historical data.

Prior to the audit, Step Up for Students had implemented a new policy to reduce sensitive historical data. Auditors verified that the organization had deleted all documents submitted during the scholarship application process through the 2014-15 school year.

In its sixth annual audit of Step Up For Students, the state’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, the Florida Auditor General has issued what amounts to a clean bill of health.

The report included only one finding on data procedures, which have been or are currently being addressed by the organization, while more broadly concluding: “Our Reading Scholarship Accounts  audit procedures and tests of selected Step Up records and accounts found that Step Up generally complied with the applicable provisions of State law.”

The audit covered Step Up’s administration of four state-authorized scholarships in 2019-2020: the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for K-12 students from low-income and working-class households; the Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs; the Hope Scholarship for students who have been bullied in public schools; and Reading Scholarship Accounts that provide help for elementary public school students who are struggling in reading.

Collectively, the programs awarded scholarships to 143,320 students that year.

The report found that all reimbursements for student expenses in the Gardiner Scholarship program, which operates as an education savings account program, were in full compliance with the law.

“Our tests of Step Up records found that the Gardiner scholarship payments selected for audit were eligible program disbursements,” the report said. The report also found no compliance issues with the other four scholarship programs.

The only finding, auditors noted, related to Social Security numbers and whether Step Up was sufficiently restricting internal computer access to such numbers. It recommended that Step Up evaluate staff members’ access privileges to the database to ensure such access was necessary to perform their job duties and to document periodic evaluations of the necessity for access.

It also recommended that a system be established to remove access for staff members whose jobs no longer required it and grant temporary access to those who needed access only occasionally.

In its fifth annual audit of Step Up For Students, the state’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, the Florida Auditor General today issued what amounted to a clean bill of health.

The report included findings on data procedures and scholarship purchase returns, both of which have been fixed by the organization, while more broadly concluding: “Our audit procedures and tests of selected Step Up records and accounts found that Step Up generally complied with the applicable provisions of State law.”

The audit covered Step Up’s administration of four state-authorized scholarships in 2018-19: the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for K-12 students from low-income and working-class households; Gardiner Scholarships for students with special needs; Hope Scholarships for students who have been bullied in public schools; and Reading Scholarship Accounts that provide help for elementary public school students who are struggling in reading. Collectively, the programs served about 116,000 students that year.

The first finding related to Social Security numbers. The auditor said Step Up was not fully notifying Tax Credit Scholarship applicants of the purpose and authorization for collecting student Social Security numbers. It also questioned whether Step Up was sufficiently restricting internal computer access to such numbers. The organization responded by adding a new notice to all families when the 2020-21 scholarship application season opened in January. It also embarked on a review of database permissions for every staffer, limiting access to Social Security numbers to only those whose job required it, and creating a new process for constant review.

The second finding was with the Gardiner Scholarship, which allows students to spend money on a variety of educational needs beyond just tuition and fees. The report said Step Up was sometimes failing its own policy of posting a timely credit to each student’s account when a household returned a purchase made through authorized online vendors. The audit found 22 returned purchases worth a total of $16,327 that were not credited back within Step Up’s 14-day guideline. By way of comparison, that same year, 2018-19, Gardiner students spent a total of $21.9 million on instructional materials. Step Up reported the problem was remedied with automation.

In his formal response, Step Up president Doug Tuthill thanked auditors for their professionalism and wrote that: “We value the insights and recommendations that contribute to process improvements that strengthen our organization.”

Step Up For Students hosts this blog. 

 

Step Up For Students, the state’s largest nonprofit scholarship organization, miscalculated the household income for 0.1 percent of students who applied for state-supported scholarships over a two-year period ending in 2017, according to a new Florida Auditor General report.

The report, released today, is the third operational audit under a law passed in 2014.

The Auditor General questioned the computation method Step Up used during those two years to establish monthly income under the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which is limited to students of lesser financial means. Step Up used four weekly or two bi-weekly paychecks to compute a month’s income, which the auditor said did not equal a full year’s pay.

As a result, the auditor wrote, between 2015 and 2017, Step Up overpaid 248 students a total of $419,760 in scholarship awards and underpaid 32 students for a total of $53,589.

The 280 students represented 0.1 percent of the 209,500 students who applied during that time period, according to Step Up. The over- and underpayments were out of a total of $913.1 million scholarships awarded.  (more…)