Lancaster ISD audit raises questions

by Thomas Allen

LANCASTER — The auditing firm Judd, Thomas, Smith presented its audit of LISD finances at a special called meeting of the Lancaster Independent School District trustees on January 24, 2008. Andrew Moore of the auditing firm gave the audit presentation.

In summary, Mr. Moore said LISD has made a lot of progress since last year on several areas of improvement noted in the audit of the 2005-2006 fiscal year. A fiscal year ends on August 31 of a year. He said, however, that the LISD had not completely met all of its areas of improvement.

One area of improvement noted by the auditor that was not met was the school district’s nutrition program. The district was required to take a small sample of the families using the nutrition program. Out of 30 samples, the firm found 3 families with errors. The errors included lack of documentation showing entitlement to the nutrition. Proper documentation included pay stubs. The effect of the errors was that LISD would be classified as “not low risk” for the nutrition program. Mr. Moore emphasized that doesn’t mean LISD is high risk. He also stated that an action plan had been implanted to address the problem in the future.

Trustee Carolyn Morris asked questions about the Activity Fund. The Auditing firm said the Activity Fund was not audited and had never been audited. Morris stated that she had to leave the meeting early and stated that, even though she wouldn’t be present to vote, she wanted the record to show she did not approve of the audit.

The meeting became heated at one point when trustee Margie King began to question the auditor. She read a statement verbatim from the audit that stated all budget amendments must be prospective. Then she read a statement from the audit stating that the school district had made no retroactive budget amendments. She questioned why the audit firm would state as a fact in its audit that the school district had not made a retroactive budget amendment, when in fact, just a week and half earlier, on January 14, 2008, the school district had indeed passed a retroactive budget amendment, amending the 2006-2007 budget.

Before the auditor could answer that question, Superintendent Larry Lewis broke in. He leveled the charge at Margie King that she was about to break up the Team of Eight. Margie King replied that she resented the manner in which the Superintendent addressed her.

Trustee Russ Johnson then broke in with his own comment. Rather than ask questions concerning the audit, he, in a forceful tone of voice stated that school finances are very difficult to understand, and even though he had been on the board for eight years, he still can’t understand them. He stated that’s why they hire professionals like the CPA firm before them.

This article was submitted by a member of the Pegasus News community.

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