The special education audit will probably not be completed in time for the annual town meeting. At Tuesday night’s meeting of the Board of Selectmen, Selectman Bob Eubank reported that the Special Education Audit Committee had received a poor response from potential auditors during the initial search phase and that the committee had decided to restart the process by sending out a new Request for Proposal (RFP) to potential auditors in the next few weeks.
The Special Education Audit Committee was formed in response to a vote at last spring’s town meeting, when voters agreed the town should spend $25,000 to audit the operations and expenditures of the schools’ special education program. Members of the committee include Keith Cheveralls, Steve Colwell, Bob Eubank, Bob Thurston, Sue Tokay and Will Verbits.
In late spring of 2007, the committee sent out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to more than 25 possible auditors qualified to conduct the audit. At Tuesday’s meeting, Eubank reported that, of the 25 auditors solicited for a proposal, only one responded. Eubank said that the committee agreed that a single response was not adequate and added that the committee did not even open the monetary portion of the response.
In order to find out just what went wrong with the proposal phase of the auditor search, Eubank said, committee members contacted all the potential auditors and asked them why they did not respond. Eubank reported that the auditors gave a variety of reasons, but that the time of year—the beginning of summer—was one key factor in the poor response to the RFPs.
In the next few weeks, said Eubank, the committee will send out the RFP to an additional seven or eight people. Additionally, they plan to change their search process by following up with each potential auditor to make sure that the RFP has been received.
Eubank acknowledged that this setback will result in a major delay for the special education audit and that it puts the timetable “out of sync” with the desired goal of having the audit complete in time for next spring’s Annual Town Meeting. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the special education department had rescheduled its own annual audit by the state in order to accommodate this committee’s audit.
