SANTA ANA – Orange County's largest school district has been ordered to repay $2.7 million that it illegally debited from its student meal program over the past five years, just one finding in a sweeping state audit released Wednesday that examines misuse of money intended to feed impoverished children.

In one instance, the Santa Ana Unified School District billed a $301,000 kitchen roof repair to its student meal program, even after being informed by state officials twice – in writing and in person – that student meal funds could not legally be used to fix the central kitchen's roof.

Santa Ana Unified also ordered its central kitchen to routinely provide free meals and snacks to high-level district officials, the report noted, including at twice-monthly school board meetings.

"Most of this is money that the districts received to feed their lower-income students, so if not for these students, they wouldn't have received it," said the audit's author, Jim Sweeney, principal consultant for the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. "And instead, some of that money was diverted to other costs."

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