The Lancaster Independent School District is giving the community access to a recently completed internal forensic audit.
School board members voted to make the "Forensic Audit Executive Summary" available to the public, during its meeting on Wednesday.
“If you’ve been following the district for any degree of time, you know that we’ve faced some challenges in the last couple of years,” said Kendall Smith, District 7 Board Trustee.
The audit was commissioned by current school board members. They said they were hoping to get a deeper look into issues at the center of controversy, and any other findings allegedly lingering under the past administration.
“We’ve been able to see and uncover a lot of things that were occurring that we were unaware of,” said District 5 Trustee and Board Vice President Ty G. Jones.
The Forensic Audit and Executive Summary was commissioned after the controversial 2020 resignation of former Superintendent, Dr. Elijah Granger. Questions about the possibility of a multi-million dollar payout lingered after his departure.
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The issue has also been the center of a lawsuit.
Some school district leaders were concerned the matter could financially cripple Lancaster ISD during the pandemic.
“For the past 2017-2020, I’m sure you all sat in this same audience and watched this board and was wondering what was going on. So this brought out information that a lot of us that sat here already knew was transpiring, as well as additional eye-opening information that we wouldn’t have thought was going on in our administration,” said Board President Marion Hamilton during the meeting.
The Lancaster ISD Board of Trustees said releasing the findings is a step toward rebuilding community trust.
“It’s a very hard thing for a school board and school district to really kind of expose necessarily everything,” said Superintendent Dr. A. Katrise Perera.
The Lancaster ISD Forensic Audit and Executive Summary is posted to the school district’s website for public review.