HARRISBURG — Harrisburg School District claims that it became aware of a $10 million federal funding suspension on Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Department of Education during a meeting with the department.
In a news release, the district said that it met with the department around 2 p.m. to address and resolve issues and questions related to the ongoing audit — the district received a list of 14 unanswered information requests and agreed to comply with 13 of them, the one being unsupervised remote access to the district’s eFinance system by the auditors. The release stated that the district was informed by the department at the conclusion of the meeting that the funds were suspended at 12 p.m.
The district claimed that it questioned the purpose of taking the action two hours prior to the meeting and asked that the decision be reconsidered as it agreed to comply with all but one of the department’s information requests. It then renewed the prior offer to give the auditors onsite direct access to the eFinance system as compromise but the offer was rejected.
The district noted that the suspended federal funding represents approximately six percent of its $150 million in annual revenues.