Richmond City School Board to review whistleblower report after school tip line found neglected

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Richmond City School Board members will review a whistleblower report regarding a neglected tip line on Monday, March 3.

The 2024 year-end whistleblower report and process review will be presented to the Richmond school board for the first time in a school board meeting on Monday. Leaders will be going over the recently filed report that found the Richmond school board’s tip lines for fraud, waste and abuse had been neglected for years. 

This will be the first time the entire school board reviews this full report after it was presented to a finance and audit committee in January.  

Doug Graeff, Director of School Board Audit Services, and compiled the report. In it, he says the hot line had not been maintained for over a year and the password had to be reset before officials could gain access.  

The report also says the fraud, waste and abuse email account had more than 700 emails dating back to 2014 that had not even been opened. Leaders say that most of those emails were spam, however, there were some more recent emails that could not be followed up on.  

Finally, the fraud, waste and abuse files on the department P-Drive were scattered and not in order.  

After all the tips were categorized, a tracking log was used to help with the reported issues. In total, there were 70 complaints, but none related to fraud, waste or abuse matters.  

Monday’s school board meeting begins at 6 p.m. on the second floor of Richmond's City Hall.