August 22 26, 2005 Status Report

1
Orleans Parish School Board Accounting, Human
Resource and Financial Management Plan and
Implementation Status Report 4
August 22 - 26, 2005 Status Report Submitted
September 22, 2005
2
Communications

• Prepared a variety of materials, including
  information given to employees who were being
  given notice, a Superintendents letter, a
  message for the NOPS website and a message to be
  aired on the school districts cable television
  channel.
• Managed media process in a way that provided the
  greatest amount of respect possible for the
  affected employees.
• Organized a press conference including Sajan
  George, Ora Watson, Torin Sanders and other
  school board members where we were able to
  provide information to the public in a clear and
  unified fashion.

3
Financial Management Accounting

• Summary Commentary
• In the week prior to Hurricane Katrina, the
  Finance Accounting Working group was focused
  primarily on coming to terms with Chase Bank in
  anticipation of closing on a 50,000,000 Revenue
  Anticipation Note (RANs) by August 31, 2005.
  The District was facing a severe financial crisis
  and it was anticipated that the District would
  not have funds to operate by mid-September
  without this financing.
• Summary of Activities
• During the week of August 22-26 of the Alvarez
  Marsal engagement with the Orleans Parish School
  Board, the Finance Accounting Group focused
  primarily on the following activities
• Completed revised monthly cash flow forecast for
  FY 2006 and agreed in principle to terms with
  Chase Bank for the RAN financing, which had been
  scheduled to close on August 31, 2005 (pending
  Board approval that had been scheduled for August
  30, 2005). Note due to Hurricane Katrinas
  impact on the operations of the District and its
  local revenue streams, we indefinitely postponed
  this financing.
• In preparation for the legislative meeting held
  in Baton Rouge on Tuesday, August 23, assisted in
  drafting a preliminary list of laws, contractual
  obligations and/or board policies that would
  likely impede the District from eliminating its
  budget deficit and from optimizing operations
  going forward.
• Assisted in the implementation of reduction in
  force set forth in the July 2005 adopted budget
  for FY 2005-6.
• Continued process with the entire AM team to
  review every non-school-based budgetary unit
  within the District as part of the work toward
  amending the Adopting Budget and erasing the
  current year projected budget deficit. Personnel
  positions and non-personnel budgets are being
  rebuilt from the bottom-up.
• Terminated site-based budgeting pilot program.
• Maintained weekly cash flow forecast and
  monitored daily cash transactions.
• Conducted training for all school-based business
  managers who handle student activity bank
  accounts.
• Implemented more aggressive procedures in cash
  management to facilitate the reconciliation of
  key bank accounts to the general ledger by
  identifying, researching, and resolving
  discrepancies, as well as planning future process
  and technology changes to minimize ongoing
  reconciliation challenges.
• Coordinated with Information Technology on
  procedures, testing, and implementation of
  positive pay, which assists in fraud detection
  and bank reconciliation, from only payroll and
  vendor payments to include all system wide
  disbursements.

4
Financial Management Accounting (cont.)

• Continued the person by person, position by
  position audit of every position being costed and
  budgeted to Special Revenue Funds. Reviewed 315
  PD-40s for budget allocations. Questioned the
  intent of 12 of them.
• Continued identifying and assessing special
  revenue budgets while working toward base line
  budgets for all grants with development of budget
  to actual reporting by grant.
• Continued to gather documentation with regards to
  2.3 Million obligation to I Can Learn Labs and a
  1.7 Million obligation to Success For All
  invoice. Met with Success for All (SFA) to
  clarify outstanding invoices and needed
  documents.
• Identified hundreds of special revenue school
  requisitions that had not been processed for over
  6 months. Began evaluating existing school needs
  and directing clerks to expeditiously process
  requisitions accordingly.
• Assessed availability of approximately 400,000
  of Title IV funds available for security
  operations.
• Terminated practice of paying stipends as bonus
  pay with special revenue funds work done after
  regular school hours.

5
Human Resources and Payroll

• Summary of Activities
• Reviewed and approved/disapproved PD-40
  (Personnel Actions New Position included/not
  included in the Budget, Reclassification,
  Replacement, or Transfer) requests.
• Reviewed all outstanding workers compensation
  judgments and settlements. Began developing
  settlement process.
• Prepared, trained, coordinated and conducted 1st
  round of the RIF.
• Actively involved in staffing Teacher and
  Non-Teacher Classifications
• Coordinated staffing activities and processes for
  all classifications at all schools for remaining
  vacant positions.
• Filled additional school-site vacancies with
  retired/rehires and teaching contracts.
• Managed substitute teacher process placement.
• Conducted healthcare re-enrollment/employment
  validation.
• Coordinated benefits enrollment data transfer
  between NOPS and Coventry.
• Develop NOPS organizational charts for midlevel
  and senior leadership.
• Drafted employment contracts.
• Reviewed supplemental payroll runs.
• Preparation for First Teacher Payroll
• Conducted large scale system testing in
  preparation for the first large teacher payroll.
  Completed test processes of the large payroll,
  with formula validation and audits to insure that
  the system capacity is sufficient.
• Updated and tested timesheet transmittals.
• Continued analysis of element calculation
  formulas and GL mapping.
• Continued identifying and improving payroll audit
  procedures.
• Assessed payroll department controls and risks.

6
Procurement

• Summary of Activities
• Continued to stock/supply schools from opening
  day
• Drafted and distributed a memo to all NOPS
  employees reminding them of District Policy with
  regard to ordering goods and services.
• Developed Training Program for all NOPS personnel
  on the Purchasing process (i.e. elimination of
  PFP, CIA and manual requisitions
  processes/policies).
• Worked with the IT department to "roll-out"
  training classes for all NOPS personnel
  concerning the online requisitions.
• Worked with Consolidated Programs to process
  manual requisitions applied to the 2003-2004
  carryover.

7
Information Technology

• Summary of Activities
• Initiated organization of the data center.
• Conducted leadership meetings to continue
  building capacity in the IT department.
• Continued bottom-up IT budget analysis.
• Continued interviews of IT personnel.
• Completed the collection and review of all IT
  contracts.
• Continued evaluation and due diligence of the
  Oracle re-implementation effort, including
  outsourcing and other capacity building
  alternatives.
• Validated the initial total cost of ownership
  (TCO) analysis of existing hardware as basis for
  IT infrastructure planning.
• Developed plan for key IT positions for cross
  training to other employees, providing backup
  resources to mitigate risk of employee turnover
  or illness.
• Developed urgent training plan for Oracle
  business and technical resources (e.g.,
  requisition training for school employees).
• Completed Release 1 of system testing for Oracle
  Payroll / HR.
• Completed testing of urgent reporting
  requirements for Oracle Finance.
• Identified urgent policy and procedure
  requirements for Finance, Procurement, HR,
  Payroll functions.
• Completed documentation of the IT disaster
  recovery plan.
• Prioritized key IT processes that require
  documentation. Business Capacity / System
  testing and production migration processes will
  be documented next.
• Updated IT Helpdesk procedures to ensure customer
  service responsiveness for the schools.