Lincoln County School District's Use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ED-OIG/F24NY0204)
Summary
Final Flash Report Lincoln County School District's Use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds, Control Number ED-OIG/F24NY0204, issued March 31, 2025 by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, Audit Services, in a letter to Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone M. Ebert of the Nevada Department of Education. The report states that Lincoln, a rural, remote local educational agency in Panaca, Nevada, was allocated $865,416 in ARP ESSER funds and had expended 100 percent as of November 1, 2024. It states that the OIG reviewed 16 non-personnel expenditures covering $414,217 (91 percent) of $453,917 and determined that all were for allowable purposes and in accordance with applicable requirements. Because it identified no exceptions, the report makes no recommendations.
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- Issuer
- U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General
- Document type
- Report
- Date
- 2025-03-31
Cite this document
“Lincoln County School District's Use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ED-OIG/F24NY0204).”
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, dated 2025-03-31. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/lincoln-county-school-district-esser/
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U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
Lincoln County School District’s
Use of Elementary and Secondary
School Emergency Relief Funds
March 31, 2025
ED-OIG/F24NY0204
FLASH REPORT
NOTICE
In accordance with Freedom of Information Act (Title 5, United States Code,
Section 552), reports that the Office of Inspector General issues are available to
members of the press and general public to the extent information they contain is not
subject to exemptions in the Act.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
Audit Services
March 31, 2025
Jhone M. Ebert
Superintendent of Public Instruction
Nevada Department of Education
700 E. Fifth Street
Carson City, NV 89701
Dear Superintendent Ebert:
Enclosed is our final report, “Lincoln County School District’s Use of Elementary and Secondary School
Emergency Relief Funds,” Control Number ED-OIG/F24NY0204. The U.S. Department of Education’s
policy is to expedite audit resolution by timely acting on findings and recommendations. Therefore, if
you have any comments or information that you believe may have a bearing on the resolution of this
flash review, you should send them directly to the following Department of Education official, who will
consider them before taking final Departmental action on this flash review:
Hayley Sanon
Acting Assistant Secretary
Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20202
We appreciate your cooperation during this review. If you have any questions, please contact me at
(202) 987-0173 or Sean.Dawson@ed.gov.
Sincerely,
/s/
Sean Dawson
Assistant Inspector General for Audit
Enclosure
400 MARYLAND AVENUE, S.W., WASHINGTON, DC 20202-1510
Promoting the efficiency, effectiveness, and integrity of the Department’s programs and operations.
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General
Results in Brief
Lincoln County School District’s Use of Elementary and Secondary
School Emergency Relief Funds
Why the OIG Performed What Did the OIG Find?
This Work We determined that all the ARP ESSER expenditures we reviewed for Lincoln were
Congress passed three coronavirus relief allowable and in accordance with applicable requirements. An LEA could use ARP ESSER
acts within a 1-year period that funds for a broad range of activities listed in any of the coronavirus relief acts and
provided more than $275 billion for an identified in U.S. Department of Education guidance, including any activities authorized by
Education Stabilization Fund to prevent, several Federal education laws.
prepare for, and respond to the
We also found that Lincoln complied with key Federal procurement requirements,
coronavirus, which the President
including those covering the procurement methods to be followed and contract cost,
declared as a national emergency in
price, and provisions, when procuring the goods or services associated with each ARP
March 2020. This included $189.5 billion
ESSER expenditure we reviewed.
for Elementary and Secondary School
Emergency Relief (ESSER), funds What Are the Next Steps?
intended to provide vital support to Because we identified no exceptions for the ARP ESSER expenditures that we reviewed,
States, local educational agencies, and our report does not include recommendations.
schools to address the impact of the
We provided a draft of this report to the Nevada Department of Education for comment.
coronavirus. Support, in part, includes
Since the draft report did not include recommendations, written comments on our draft
activities designed to help students and
report were not provided.
educators safely return to and sustain
in-person instruction, and that address
the educational inequities exacerbated
by the coronavirus pandemic and
students’ social, emotional, mental
health, and academic needs.
Ensuring that ESSER funds are used for
allowable purposes is critical to help
address the needs of students and
educators. The Lincoln County School
District (Lincoln) was allocated
approximately $865,000 in American
Rescue Plan (ARP) ESSER funds to
support 11 schools serving about
958 students.
We performed this review to determine
whether Lincoln expended ARP ESSER
grant funds for allowable purposes in
accordance with applicable
requirements.
Final Flash Report ED-OIG/F24NY0204
Purpose
The objective of this flash review was to determine whether the Lincoln County School
District (Lincoln) expended American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary
School Emergency Relief (ESSER) 1 grant funds for allowable purposes in accordance
with applicable requirements. This flash review report presents the results of our
review.
Lincoln County School District
Lincoln is a rural, remote local educational agency (LEA), located in Panaca, Nevada,
with 11 schools serving 958 students. Lincoln was allocated $865,416 in ARP ESSER
funds and as of November 1, 2024, had expended 100 percent of its funds. According to
Nevada’s Federal Relief Tracker, Lincoln budgeted 40 percent of funds for staff,
50 percent for supplies, and 10 percent for services. 2 Lincoln’s ARP ESSER plan was to
use its funds, in part, to continue district-wide social and emotional student-centered
programs, professional development coaching for schools, student-centered instruction,
professional development for teachers, modernization of curriculum and instruction
materials, technology-integrated instruction and activities, and web-based curriculum
for distance education students. Additionally, its funds were to be used on distance
education technology (Chromebooks), student transportation, incentives to retain
existing staff, recruitment incentives, and sanitation supplies for school facilities.
1
ESSER is one of multiple emergency relief funds comprising the Education Stabilization Fund, which
was first authorized and funded under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act
(March 27, 2020), and for which Congress later provided additional funding under the Coronavirus
Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (December 27, 2020) and the ARP
(March 11, 2021). Under ESSER, the U.S. Department of Education awarded grants to State educational
agencies for the purpose of providing local educational agencies with emergency relief funds to address
the impacts that the coronavirus pandemic had on elementary and secondary schools and their
students.
2
This information is from the Nevada Department of Education’s Federal Relief Tracker, which is
updated periodically.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0204 1
Results of Our Review
For the selected transactions covered by our review, Lincoln expended ARP ESSER grant
funds for allowable purposes and in accordance with applicable requirements. We
selected and reviewed 16 non-personnel ARP ESSER expenditures 3 (13 percent) from a
total population of 120 ARP ESSER expenditures for our review period, from July
1, 2022, through June 30, 2024. For these 16 non-personnel expenditures, we used a
judgmental, risk-based process to select 6 and a non-statistical random sample process
to select the other 10 expenditures. These expenditures represented $414,217
(91 percent) of the total $453,917 in non-personnel ARP ESSER expenditures during our
review period.
We reviewed each expenditure to determine whether it was (1) connected to the
coronavirus pandemic and intended to prevent, prepare for, or respond to the
pandemic, including its impact on the social, emotional, mental health, and academic
needs of students; (2) an authorized use of ARP ESSER funds under applicable law and
regulations; and (3) reasonable and necessary and otherwise permissible under the
Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for
Federal Awards (2 Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) part 200). We also performed
additional work, as needed, to determine whether Lincoln complied with key Federal
procurement requirements, specifically those covered under 2 C.F.R. sections 200.320
(methods of procurement to be followed), 200.324 (contract cost and price), and
200.327 (contract provisions), when procuring the goods or services associated with
each expenditure. We interviewed Lincoln officials to gain a basic understanding of how
they used ARP ESSER funds, and their processes for approving and monitoring ARP
ESSER expenditures.
An LEA could use ARP ESSER funds for a broad range of activities listed in any of the
coronavirus relief acts and identified in U.S. Department of Education guidance,
including any activities authorized by several Federal education laws.
We determined that all 16 expenditures that we reviewed for Lincoln were used for
allowable purposes and in accordance with applicable requirements. These
expenditures were generally for sanitation products, student transportation, district
reading materials, professional development coaching for teachers, and annual
membership for professional development for teachers. Each expenditure was
3
We limited the scope of our review to non-personnel expenditures; personnel expenditures were
excluded because Lincoln’s non-personnel expenditures represented 70 percent of the total
expenditures within our review period.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0204 2
connected to the coronavirus pandemic, an authorized use of ESSER funds under
applicable law and regulations, and reasonable and necessary and otherwise permissible
under 2 C.F.R. part 200. In addition, we found that Lincoln complied with key Federal
procurement requirements covered under 2 C.F.R. sections 200.320 (methods of
procurement to be followed), 200.324 (contract cost and price), and 200.327 (contract
provisions) when procuring the goods or services associated with each expenditure.
Because all the expenditures we reviewed were for allowable purposes and in
accordance with applicable requirements, we make no recommendations in this report.
Nevada Department of Education’s Comments
The Nevada Department of Education did not provide written comments to this report
because it did not include recommendations.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0204 3
Appendix A. Scope and Methodology
Our review covered Lincoln’s ARP ESSER expenditures from July 1, 2022, through June
30, 2024, our review period. We limited the scope of our review to ARP ESSER funds
because Lincoln’s ARP ESSER funds represented the highest dollar amount ($865,416) of
all ESSER funds ($1,353,805) that were allocated to them. We also limited our internal
control work to gain a basic understanding of the process that Lincoln used to account
for ARP ESSER funds, including the accounting system and accounting codes used by
Lincoln. We conducted our review remotely from October 2024 through January 2025.
We discussed the results of our review with Lincoln officials on January 14, 2025.
Sampling Methodology
To determine whether Lincoln expended ARP ESSER grant funds during our review
period for allowable purposes in accordance with applicable requirements, we selected
and reviewed 16 non-personnel expenditures (25 percent) from a total population of
64 non-personnel expenditures using a combination of risk-based judgmental selection,
and a non-statistical random sample process. The 16 expenditures represented
$414,217 (91 percent) of the total $453,917 in non-personnel ARP ESSER expenditures
during our review period. We selected 6 of these 16 expenditures using a risk-based
judgmental process in which we considered one or a combination of the following
criteria: high-dollar transaction, vague purchase description, or unique vendor
description. We selected the other 10 expenditures using a non-statistical random
sample process. Since the expenditures were selected using both a risk-based
judgmental selection and a non-statistical random sample process, the results of our
testing cannot be projected to the universe of ARP ESSER expenditures.
Use of Computer-Processed Data
We relied on computer-processed data from Lincoln’s accounting system, which
included data from the LEA’s general ledger. Lincoln provided this information in a PDF
document which we converted to a spreadsheet. To assess the completeness of the
expenditure data in the spreadsheet, we compared total expenditures in the
spreadsheet to the total expenditures in the monthly expenditure reports that Lincoln
submitted to the Nevada Department of Education for our review period. To assess the
reliability of the expenditure data in the spreadsheet, we reviewed supporting
documentation, such as invoices and proof of payment, for our sample of
16 expenditures. We did not identify any issues and concluded that the expenditure
data in the spreadsheet were reliable for their intended use in this review.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0204 4
Compliance with Standards
We conducted our work in accordance with the Office of Inspector General quality
control standards and the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
“Quality Standards for Federal Offices of Inspector General,” which require that we
conduct our work with integrity, objectivity, and independence. We believe that the
information obtained provides a reasonable basis for our conclusions.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0204 5
Appendix B. Acronyms and Abbreviations
ARP American Rescue Plan
C.F.R. Code of Federal Regulations
ESSER Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief
LEA local educational agency
Lincoln Lincoln County School District
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0204 6
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