DC Public Schools: $125 Million Exposed to Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

The System That Was Supposed to Protect the Money

DC Public Schools (DCPS) has an annual budget of over $1.2 billion. With that much money flowing through an organization, internal controls are not optional — they are the difference between a functioning system and one that bleeds money. Controls include things like requiring multiple approvals for large purchases, maintaining documentation for all transactions, and separating the people who authorize spending from those who process payments.

The DC Auditor found that DCPS had failed to maintain these basic controls.

What the Audit Found

The findings were broad. Procurement processes — the rules for how DCPS buys goods and services — were not consistently followed. Contracts were awarded without proper competitive bidding. Payments were processed without adequate supporting documentation, meaning money went out the door without clear records of what it was for or whether the goods and services were actually received.

Perhaps most concerning, the audit found inadequate segregation of duties. This means that in some cases, the same individuals who initiated spending requests also had the authority to approve them — eliminating a basic check that exists to prevent both errors and intentional misuse.

What $125 Million at Risk Means

The $125 million figure does not mean that amount was stolen. It means that amount flowed through systems with controls so weak that fraud, waste, or abuse could have occurred without detection. The auditor could not determine whether funds were actually misused because the documentation and monitoring systems that would answer that question did not exist.

This is the fundamental problem: when controls are this weak, you cannot know whether the money was well spent. You can only know that the systems designed to ensure it was well spent were not functioning.

Auditor Recommendations

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