More than 70 percent of credit- card purchases made by schools were not documented or bid out properly — or weren’t for justifiable expenses, an audit found.
The review of five schools and their oversight offices found a host of questionable charges — including $775 for five Kindle e-readers from Amazon, $679 from Target for sofa beds and more than $500 for pizza and Pepsi from a Bronx pizzeria.
The audit looked at only $133,000 out of the $17.2 million in credit-card purchases by schools in fiscal 2011 and was the latest in a string of investigations that found poor oversight by the Department of Education.
“Greater care and discretion in the use of
Liu’s office made 13 recommendations for tightening credit-card oversight.
A DOE spokeswoman said the agency had “implemented most of the comptroller’s recommendations prior to the audit.”