East Haven Authorizes Another $10,000 for School Spending Audit

EAST HAVEN, CT - The Board of Education, at its April 24th meeting, voted to authorize spending an additional $10,000 to pay a firm that it hired several months to do a general forensic audit on how the town’s schools bills are paid.

The board has not said what the overall cost of the audit, which is being conducted by the firm of Shipman and Goodwin, is costing the town.

The board, again at its April 24th meeting, voted to not allow any more money to be spent on the audit without its permission being first asked by the auditing firm.

The audit is being conducted by Steve Pedneault, of Shipman and Goodwin. He is a forensic accountant.

Conducting a comprehensive audit of the schools' books was brought up several months ago by members of the Town Council, who were demanding answers when an audit report revealed that the Board of Education ran close to a $1 million deficit in fiscal year 2015-16.

During the fiscal year that ended in June of 2016, the school board spent $918,765 more than its allotted budgeted of $47.2 million.