Nye County School District's Use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ED-OIG/F24NY0206)
Summary
A Final Flash Report of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, ED-OIG/F24NY0206, dated March 31, 2025, on Nye County School District's use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds. The report states that Nye was allocated $10,199,345 in American Rescue Plan (ARP) ESSER funds and that the OIG reviewed 16 non-personnel expenditures covering July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024. It states that all 16 expenditures were for allowable purposes and in accordance with applicable requirements, and that Nye complied with key Federal procurement requirements. Because the OIG identified no exceptions, the report states that it 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
“Nye County School District's Use of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ED-OIG/F24NY0206).”
U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, dated 2025-03-31. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/nye-county-school-district-esser/
, SHA-256 43ebe55d7f4cbb8889441ed6f9d740108da6f3b55678261fb8a6603e8ba7a43b.Full text
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
Nye County School District’s Use
of Elementary and Secondary
School Emergency Relief Funds
March 31, 2025
ED-OIG/F24NY0206
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, “Nye County School District’s Use of Elementary and Secondary School
Emergency Relief Funds,” Control Number ED-OIG/F24NY0206. 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
Nye 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 Nye were allowable
Congress passed three coronavirus relief and in accordance with applicable requirements. An LEA could use ARP ESSER funds for a
acts within a 1-year period that broad range of activities listed in any of the coronavirus relief acts and identified in
provided more than $275 billion for an U.S. Department of Education guidance, including any activities authorized by several
Education Stabilization Fund to prevent, Federal education laws.
prepare for, and respond to the
We also found that Nye complied with key Federal procurement requirements, including
coronavirus, which the President
those covering the procurement methods to be followed and contract cost, price, and
declared as a national emergency in
provisions, when procuring the goods or services associated with each ARP ESSER
March 2020. This included $189.5 billion
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; address the
educational inequities exacerbated by
the coronavirus pandemic; and address
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 Nye County School
District (Nye) was allocated
approximately $10,199,345 in American
Rescue Plan (ARP) ESSER funds to
support 25 schools serving about
5,657 students.
We performed this review to determine
whether Nye expended ARP ESSER grant
funds for allowable purposes in
accordance with applicable
requirements.
Final Flash Report ED-OIG/F24NY0206
Purpose
The objective of this flash review was to determine whether the Nye County School
District (Nye) 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.
Nye County School District
Nye is a rural, local educational agency (LEA), located in Pahrump, Nevada, with
25 schools serving about 5,657 students. Nye was allocated $10,199,345 in ARP ESSER
funds and as of December 13, 2024, had expended 100 percent of its funds. According
to Nevada’s Federal Relief Tracker, Nye budgeted 8 percent of funds for staff,
32 percent for supplies, and 59 percent for services. 2 Nye’s approved ARP ESSER plan
was to use its funds, in part, on digital resources for students, internet connectivity
resources, and project-based science resources and to incorporate evidenced-based
learning tools to address learning loss. Additionally, its funds were to be used for hiring
additional school staff, social workers, and school resource officers to support Nye’s
efforts in supporting social-emotional learning, and to improve facilities, particularly the
heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems of schools.
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 to provide 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/F24NY0206 1
Results of Our Review
For the selected transactions covered by our review, Nye 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 (7 percent) from a
total population of 238 ARP ESSER expenditures for our review period from July 1, 2023,
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 10 expenditures. These expenditures represented $1,459,760 (51 percent) of
the total $2,858,992 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 laws 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 Nye 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 Nye 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 Nye were used for
allowable purposes and in accordance with applicable requirements. These
expenditures were generally for textbooks, shipping and handling, HVAC modernization,
staffing security resource officers, and Chromebooks. Each expenditure was connected
to the coronavirus pandemic, an authorized use of ESSER funds under applicable laws
3
We limited the scope of our review to non-personnel expenditures; personnel expenditures were
excluded because Nye’s non-personnel expenditures represented 79 percent of the total expenditures
within our review period.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0206 2
and regulations, and reasonable and necessary and otherwise permissible under
2 C.F.R. part 200. In addition, we found that Nye 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/F24NY0206 3
Appendix A. Scope and Methodology
Our review covered Nye’s ARP ESSER expenditures from July 1, 2023, through June 30,
2024, our review period. We limited the scope of our review to ARP ESSER funds
because Nye’s ARP ESSER funds represented the highest dollar amount ($10,199,345) of
all ESSER funds ($15,884,939) that were allocated to them. We also limited our internal
control work to gain a basic understanding of the process that Nye used to account for
ARP ESSER funds, including the accounting system and accounting codes used by Nye.
We conducted our review remotely from October 2024 through February 2025. We
discussed the results of our review with Nye officials on February 5, 2025.
Sampling Methodology
To determine whether Nye 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 (7 percent) from a total population of
238 non-personnel expenditures using a combination of a risk-based judgmental
selection and a non-statistical random sample process. The 16 expenditures represented
$1,459,760 (51 percent) of the total $2,858,992 in non-personnel ARP ESSER
expenditures during our review period. We selected six expenditures using a
judgmental, risk-based process considering 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 Nye’s accounting system, which included
data from the LEA’s general ledger. Nye 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 Nye 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/F24NY0206 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/F24NY0206 5
Appendix B. Acronyms and Abbreviations
ARP American Rescue Plan
C.F.R. Code of Federal Regulations
ESSER Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief
HVAC heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
LEA local educational agency
Nye Nye County School District
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Inspector General
ED-OIG/F24NY0206 6
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