The results of the Warren County R-III School District's annual audit have been released.
At the December meeting of the R-III School Board, Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith presented the findings of the district’s yearly independent audit.
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The results of the Warren County R-III School District's annual audit have been released.
At the December meeting of the R-III School Board, Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith presented the findings of the district’s yearly independent audit.
“We’re very thankful for our auditors who go through our books and look for any mistakes we might have made,” Klinginsmith said. “Our goal is not to have any, but unfortunately, we did have one error that we found.”
Klinginsmith detailed a discrepancy found in the Annual Secretary of the Board Report (ASBR). The $232,869 discrepancy was due to an unrecorded transfer between the district’s General and Capital Projects funds.
“In June, we approved a resolution to transfer some funds from Fund 4 to Fund 1,” Klinginsmith said. “The board did all of the correct actions that we needed to do; it was just simply a reporting error. It just forgot to be done (included) when we submitted the ASBR. It is really out of the ordinary for how we operate in that world. Typically, what will happen is that we’ll go through and balance our accounts and hit send to the ASBR. This year, there was an additional step to show the transfer, which wasn’t done.”
The transfer was necessitated by a surplus of allowable money in the district’s general fund, which isn’t allowed by law.
“Last year, we learned that there is a maximum amount of money you can have in Fund 4,” Klinginsmith said. “We’ve never really had a problem with having too much money. Now, this was and we had to transfer the money.”
Klinginsmith said a simple change in protocol will help prevent this problem in the future.
The superintendent said that an extra level of gatekeeping should fix the issue.
“There (is a) way to fix this in the future, and it’s an easy fix,” Klinginsmith said. “Before, we’d send this over and the business office would just sign off. Now, I’m going to sign off before they hit submit. The business will put it all together and I’ll sign off before we submit. I’ll review it with them and then, physically, on paper we’ll sign it.”
Another problem the audit found came as a carryover in the district’s 2024-25 count for verifying the number of students who take part in the free and reduced lunch program.
“Last year, we were unable to verify our free and reduced lunch count,” Klinginsmith said. “On a certain day, we pull a verification count and we’re supposed to verify all those kids. Due to the new (computer) program at that time, Infinite Campus, they didn’t have a way for us to do that; we couldn’t produce the documents.”
The superintendent added that a simple logistical issue in this year’s reporting continued the issue.
“That was supposed to be reevaluated,” Klinginsmith said. “Last year, they came after October, so we didn’t have that. This year, they came in September, so we didn’t have that report. It’s just a carryover on that finding. We believe we’ve fixed that.”
