The state auditor?s office has indicated it might take a look at school lunch fraud in North Carolina.

As previously discussed, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is weighing the idea of doing a more extensive audit of its free and reduced-lunch program. State officials have threatened to take away CMS? school lunch subsidy if local leaders attempt to do a thorough audit.

This entry in The Rhino Times blog quotes correspondence between Larry Gauvreau, a school board member in CMS, and Tim Hoegemeyer, general counsel for the state auditor. In his note, Hoegemeyer said that an F&R lunch audit would ?most likely be on a larger scale than just the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System.? He added:

However, I must stress that as serious as this issue appears to be and as much as Mr. Merritt believes some concerns related to this issue are very real, he can not promise that an audit will be conducted on this matter at this time. Again, this is not because of a belief that it is an unimportant subject but rather it is because the Auditor’s Office, while having a tremendously capable and skilled staff, none-the-less has limited resources.

This is certainly not to say that we will not be auditing the FRL but only meant to convey the fact we are looking at the possibility of conducting such an audit and any decision one way or another will have to take into account our resources and current priorities.

The USDA and state and local school officials say that a district can only audit 3 percent of applicants, as required by law, and that any amount above that is impermissible. That?s not good enough for some school board members, like Gauvreau, who are pushing for a comprehensive audit.