The Cumberland County Board of Education halted a plan to consolidate 16 district Amazon accounts into a single centralized umbrella following concerns regarding the legal handling of school activity funds.
Director of Schools Rebecca Farley said the proposed consolidation projects savings of $40,000 and $50,000 annually by eliminating redundant membership fees, shipping fees and securing Prime discounts for all departments. Board Chairman Scott VanWinkle said he has concerns about whether the plan complies with state statutes governing school activity funds.
“If one school has a fundraising account where they decide they wanna buy something from Amazon and that goes through a central account, if they get rewards for that, it should go back to that fund that generated that purchase,” VanWinkle said. “It can’t go to a centralized account and be.”
VanWinkle said the district must ensure it is not commingling funds from different accounts, which could lead to significant issues during a state audit. Van Winkle said the current rollout should be placed on hold until the board attorney can review the procedures to ensure they align with the Tennessee Comptroller.
“I don’t know if anybody’s ever been involved with an audit finding or not, but it’s no fun,” VanWinkle said. “I think before we get some feedback from our attorney, that we should put this rollout on hold and make sure that we’re not in violation of TCA or that we’re not in violation of the comptroller’s manual.”
Chief Financial Officer Sonya Delk said the Amazon business structure utilizes subgroups that allow individual school bookkeepers to maintain control over their specific requisitions and invoices. Delk said the rewards, which range from one to three percent depending on annual spending, could be manually divided and returned to the schools based on their proportional expenditures.
“I do understand the money needs to go back into the schools,” Delk said. “I’ll check with Matt about that because they are already getting such a deep discount.”
Farley said the district will have the written procedures delivered to the board attorney’s office immediately. The board expects to receive a legal opinion on the consolidation plan by Monday.
The district previously operated 13 accounts with individual Prime memberships and three accounts that paid for shipping on every order.