Feeding students could start costing the County, the boards were warned

This month, Northumberland’s finance facilitator, Dr. Karen Pica, sounded the alarm on additional problems with Northumberland Public Schools’ nutrition account. She briefed the School Board and Board of Supervisors on two issues—first, a recent review that found noncompliance with federal regulations, and second, spending that is on a risky path toward requiring local tax dollars.

Procurement Problems

Based on the findings of a recent review, procurement procedures are not being followed the way they should, Pica told the boards this month. “We’ve got to get that fixed.”

One example is “splitting procurements,” meaning “essentially what we’re doing is using the micro-purchasing threshold rather than contracting,” she said.

The review calls this out as possibly being inequitable sourcing and raises concerns about repeated micro-purchases from Amazon compared to sourcing from other qualified suppliers.

“Micro-purchases are not intended to be the primary method of procurement,” the review states. The school system is expected to forecast purchases and determine the best way to obtain products and services.

The report acknowledges that in rural areas—due to factors such as cost to vendors and time or capacity constraints on their travel—a school system may be limited in options. But in those cases, the school system is required to document the reason it is not feasible to distribute purchases among a variety of suppliers.

Another issue is missing documentation, Pica noted. For example, the review stated records related to certain contract contracts were not available.

Going forward, NCPS must maintain sufficient procurement records, including rationale for contractor selection, solicitations and responses, contracts and renewals, and the basis for contract prices, the report stated. It also required the school system to submit corrective action plans. According to Pica, the nutrition director was working on this as of earlier this month.

Spending Problems

Northumberland’s finance team has also identified problematic spending related to school nutrition. Currently, the nutrition account is completely funded by pass-through monies. Northumberland County does not foot any of the bill to feed its students. But the school system is spending more than it is receiving, Pica noted.

Pica told the school board that expenses significantly exceed income in this program. “Unless action is taken next year, the program will not be self-sustaining, which I believe is required, and county funds would be needed to support it.”

“…when examining the expenses, I noticed increases in several key areas. Those increases do not appear to be attributable to inflation or changes in purchasing habits,” she added.

Superintendent Dr. Karen Leslie also told the school board the nutrition spending was on a concerning trajectory. She said it is important to point out that the nutrition budget for the upcoming FY26–27 school year would not require local funds. “However, there is a projected issue beyond that year’s budget where we are going to have to make some significant decisions on how to move forward on that.”

School Board Chairman Dr. Dave Curran called for the matter to be reported to the Board of Supervisors. “I think it’s important that we do that knowing that there’s a potential that local funds may be needed in the future,” he said.

When Pica later discussed the matter with the supervisors, she said, “We’re going to need to look at that [nutrition] account. Or, the bottom line is the county will have to start supplementing that fund, which is not how it’s supposed to work.”

At the request of the finance department, the school board and Board of Supervisors had recently approved an in-county audit of the nutrition department’s finances, which was planned for June. But Pica said due to “changes in the finance team,” that may need to be revisited because she is not certain it is feasible to complete that work according to the original timeline.

However, she emphasized, it is absolutely necessary that it gets done, not only based on findings of the nutrition review but also based on some recent data from the state that identifies a deficit in the accounts for the nutrition fund.

“We’ve not completed the year yet,” Pica said earlier this month. “We may get out of that deficit or it may get bigger.”