Sioux County schools resolving audit issues
By KERRI REMPP, Record staff writer Friday, November 21, 2008
The Sioux County Schools ended up with more money than budgeted for the 2007-08 academic year, but minor problems persisted in the district’s annual audit.
Vince Ryan of Falco presented the completed audit to the school board Monday night with several recommendations. Many small governmental entities have findings of degrees of segregation in their financial matters, Ryan said. In small towns and school districts it’s not always possible to have two or three different people receiving cash, paying bills and reconciling statements. So while that finding wasn’t a major concern for him, a continuing problem of lack of a paper trail was.
In the previous year’s audit, Falco found that four of six expenses in the activity fund did not have the superintendent’s initials or signature approving the expense. Improvement was seen in this category, but Ryan says more needs to be done. He pointed out that one of five deposits did not have a receipt for support, one of five expenditures had no invoice and one check cleared the bank without a signature.
The previous year’s report also noted that several employees W-4s were not on file or didn’t agree with the withholdings in their check. Again, improvement was achieved, but there are still a few employees that have improper or no W-4 and a few did not have appropriate identification information on file. Dr. Brett Geis, who took over as superintendent this year, said these problems are already on the way to being rectified.
Ryan also said the district needs to fix withholdings for the district’s cafeteria plan and report those withholdings on a separate line item on each employee’s W-2 form. These problems appeared to have been created when the district switched financial software and should be resolved as the conversion is complete.
Total receipts for the 2007-08 year came in slightly under budget at $1,958,831. However, the expense side of the budget also came in well under what was projected. Total disbursements were reported at $2,135,966, roughly $77,000 less than expected. Actual costs came in less in every category except board education, office of the principal, federal programs and transfers. The general fund balance at the beginning of the year stood at $901,955. By the end of the academic year it was $724,820.
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