School Safety Special Audits

On December 6, 2023, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) approved a resolution directing our Office to conduct a series of special audits to review certain areas related to school safety and emergency response best practices, including: 

• School districts’ and charter schools’ emergency response practices and plans. 

• School districts’ and charter schools’ key physical safety infrastructure and multimedia data communication systems. 

• School safety interoperability fund. 

• Other areas relating to school emergency response and preparedness as deemed appropriate by the Auditor General and approved by JLAC. 

On December 9, 2024, we issued the first special audit report evaluating school districts’ and charter schools’ (districts and charters) emergency operations plans (EOPs) and whether they met the Arizona School Emergency Operations Plans Minimum Requirements jointly developed by the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) and the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (DEMA). The report also included information about schools’ efforts to implement and test their plans and identifies State-wide changes to improve schools’ emergency preparedness. Additionally, we reported information to JLAC deemed too sensitive to be included in a public audit report in a limited-use, confidential report. 

The second audit in the series will involve work in several areas, including districts’ and charters’ key physical safety infrastructure and multimedia data communication systems and whether the infrastructure and systems are aligned with statutory requirements, recommended practices, and other States’ practices. We will also evaluate expenditures from the School Safety Interoperability Fund and whether those expenditures were for statutorily authorized purposes.

• January through February 2025—Collect initial information and conduct audit planning.

• March through July 2025—Select districts and charters for in-depth review and conduct audit fieldwork. We will contact the districts and charters selected for in-depth reviews in March 2025 to notify them that they have been selected and request additional information and documentation relevant to the audit areas. During audit fieldwork, we will visit selected districts’ and charters’ school sites. 

• August through September 2025—Draft audit report. 

• October through November 2025—Transmit confidential preliminary draft report information to selected districts, charters, and other entities for review and, if needed, meet to discuss any feedback provided (see question 9 for more information about reviewing the confidential preliminary draft report). 

• On or before December 31, 2025—Issue public audit report. 

As with the first special audit, we will email notifications related to this second special audit to each district and charter. During the first school safety special audit, we worked with districts and charters to update our contact list to ensure the appropriate district/charter staff received correspondence from our Office. If you would like to verify your districts’ or charters’ contacts, need to update contact information, or would like to include additional staff to receive audit-related notifications, please email Josh Lykins, Deputy Manager, at jlykins@azauditor.gov. 

As with the first special audit, for the second special audit, we will select districts and charters for in-depth review based on the results of our preliminary work and the districts’ and charters’ 2024 survey responses. Additionally, we will select districts and charters to ensure that districts and charters of various sizes, types, and locations are included in the review. Additionally, and as with the first special audit, districts and charters that did not respond to the required school safety survey our Office administered in early 2024 are more likely to be selected for an in-depth review.

Although we will conduct multiple audits as part of the school safety special audit series, there is not currently a set number of audits. The JLAC resolution that authorized the school safety special audit series directs our Office to review specific areas related to school safety and emergency response practices and authorizes our Office to review additional areas, as deemed appropriate by the Auditor General and approved by JLAC (see question 1 for the specific areas we were directed to review and information on the first special audit).

As with the first special audit, we will work with selected districts and charters to schedule our on-site visits to minimize disruptions. For example, we will work with districts and charters to arrange any school visits such that our visits do not occur during State testing. We will consider the districts’ and charters’ specific circumstances as we plan our fieldwork. 

The JLAC resolution directing our Office to conduct the school safety special audit series requires school districts, charter schools, charter operators, and Arizona counties, cities, and towns and their respective law enforcement departments or agencies to provide us access to all employees and records as specified in A.R.S. §41-1279.04 that we deem necessary to conduct the audits. Accordingly, any district or charter documents may be subject to review as part of the school safety special audit series. As with the first special audit, we will communicate throughout the audit to request documents necessary for our review. 

Each audit in the series will result in a public audit report, which will contain the findings and recommendations related to each of the areas we review. Additionally, JLAC’s resolution authorized our Office to produce a limited-use, confidential report for information deemed too sensitive to be included in a public audit report. Similar to the first audit report, district- and charter-specific information will not be included in the public report and will be reported to JLAC in a limited-use, confidential report.

Yes. As with the first special audit, we will provide selected districts and charters with a confidential preliminary draft of the information we plan to report about their district or charter. Selected districts and charters will have an opportunity to review the confidential preliminary draft information and provide us feedback. We will provide additional information about reviewing the draft report to selected districts and charters at the appropriate time.  

We have made a recording of 1 of the information sessions available here. A PDF version of the PowerPoint slides presented in the information sessions is available here.