Question: Do athletic coaches need to sign purchase requests to release money from their athletic accounts or is it okay for only the athletic director to sign the purchase request (along with the Activities Director, ASB student and principal)? We have a number of "off-campus" coaches and it is difficult to get signatures from them. However, the athletic director also signs the purchase request. Just wondering if we could eliminate the step of having each individual coach sign to release money.
Response: The laws and regulations that govern ASB activities and funds are not sufficiently comprehensive to provide detailed guidance for all areas in which questions arise. Districts need to establish sound business practices, internal controls and effective procedures used to be followed by the ASB. Because only a few laws and regulations in the Education Code, Penal Code, California Constitution and California Code of Regulations identify parameters for operation, a significant amount of local flexibility is needed.
It is very important that school districts ensure that adequate checks and balances, commonly known in business as internal controls, exist over the disbursement of ASB funds. Student money must be spent in accordance with a system that includes sound internal controls, good accounting practices and conformity with board regulations (Education Code section 48933). In addition, in accordance with the Education Code, all ASB expenditures must be pre-approved. At the secondary level, that preapproval must be a student representative, the certificated ASB advisor, and the board designee, which is normally the site principal.
It is critical that districts establish board policy and administrative regulations containing guidelines for their own specific district on what they consider allowable and prohibited expenses. These policies/regulations should be regularly reviewed and updated as individual questions come up so that they cover the types of items that are specific to your own district. Then questions such as yours would be documented in the future as to what is considered allowable.
To help ensure that adequate internal controls are in place, policies and procedures based on laws, regulations and sound business practices need to be established, implemented and maintained. All individuals who are expected to carry out the policies and procedures should be trained, and ideally, cross training should occur for each job.
Your specific question of whether coaches need to sign purchase requests to release money from their athletic accounts would depend upon the policies and procedures established by your board as well as who the actual certificated club advisor for that specific sport is. If the coach is the certificated advisor, then yes, they must sign the purchase order. If the athletic advisor is the certificated advisor, then their signature, along with the student representative and the site principal is adequate.
2/25/10
