FLORIDA SCHOOL DISTRICT TO TIGHTEN INVENTORY CONTROL AFTER COMPUTERS REPORTED MISSING Hernando Today - Online EditionSchool boss: inventory flaws will be fixed
By PAUL QUINLAN pquinlan@hernandotoday.com
Published: May 9, 2005

BROOKSVILLE -- Apparent flaws in the method the school district uses to account for missing inventory have prompted officials to look for ways to plug the leaks.
The promise came after Hernando Today published Friday that an $18,800 minivan, which school inventory officials reported as lost, had actually been returned to the school district almost a year ago.
Under state law the school district must perform an annual audit of each of its 40 facilities, including all 19 schools, to check that equipment has not gone missing.
If vehicles, computers or other big-ticket items worth $1,000 or more disappear and fail to resurface after four years, officials compile a list of the items, which they then ask school board members to approve for deletion from inventory.

On April 15, the district compiled the latest list of missing equipment: 28 items that included computers, printers, video equipment and furniture worth more than $69,000.
But a check with the Hernando County Sheriff's Office Thursday found that police had returned the most expensive item on the list, a 1998 Dodge Grand Voyager, last summer. Authorities recovered the stolen van, which was also filled with stolen school computer equipment, in a shopping mall parking lot in Hillsborough County."What I'm finding is that we have some processing issues," said Ken Pritz, executive director of facility and support operations. "There are some things that we need to do a better job with."
Officials sent the latest list of missing equipment to the school board last week, asking for a vote at their regular board meeting to delete the 28 items from inventory. Such a move would essentially mean the district is absorbing the loss.
But officials pulled the vote from meeting agenda after board member Sandra Nicholson asked officials for some evidence, in the form of police reports or insurance claims, to prove the equipment missing and that all options to recover the items had been exhausted.
"It's a lot of money and it's expensive," Nicholson said Friday. "I just think we need to look at the whole issue and make sure that people are accountable for what they're purchasing."
School officials should have performed a more thorough check of the missing items list before submitting it to the board, Pritz said.
The district audits each school or work site annually during the course of the fiscal year, which ends June 30. Total inventory for all 40 sites amounts to more than $38 million.
"When you deal with 40 sites, things are going to disappear," Pritz said. "Of course, I would like to get to the point where we don't have anything disappear."

Reporter Paul Quinlan can be contacted at (352) 544-5289.