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GHES Finishes First Year In The Black
Pope County Tribune - Starbuck Times
Written by Chad Koenen - Starbuck Times New Editor   
Thursday, 05 March 2009 09:19


The audit helps give school officials a look at how the operations are working on a financial basis from year-to-year. While the numbers from 2007 and 2008 year-end were compared side-to-side, Koehn said the numbers don't give a fair representation of the standing of the school and where it is going because of a lack of student activity in 2007.

"Comparing 2008 and 2007 doesn't really work very well because there wasn't any activity in 2007," he said.

Instead, he said next year's audit should give the board a good indication on how the operation of the school is going, because the school will have completed its second year of student activity.

School funding

According to the audit, GHES is like many Minnesota charter schools with a majority of its funding coming from general education aid, special education aid, and charter school lease aid. In addition, the school received some federal grant start-up and a variety of other grant money over the course of the last year.

Of the $1,072,287 in total revenues received last year, most of the money or, $984,935 was state and federal money. A majority of the remaining money received by the school came from investment earnings and other related revenues.

Much of the $929,098 in total expenses last year went toward teaching, administration, and supplies and materials.

The average daily membership average in the district was 84.34 students, according to the audit.

Audit findings

In addition to the financial aspect of the audit, GHES was also given a list of six deficiencies over the internal control at the school.

One of the perceived deficiencies, a lack of proper controls over the lunch punch cards and meals served, has already been corrected. The school began using a computerized lunch system last fall which will give certain controls to school officials over the collection of lunch revenue and lunch cards.

"So you already identified that issue and have taken steps to correct that," Koehn said. He commended the board for already taking steps to correct the deficiency.
Another perceived deficiency was due to the limited size of the business office staff, which will lead to a limited segregation of duties. Due to the size of GHES, Koehn said properly segregating duties will be difficult to do in the business office.

He said the finding is common for small schools like GHES, short of having a full-time business office staff of approximately four people, the audit will continue to find this deficiency. Rather than hiring a larger staff, Koehn told the board "you have to determine what's cost beneficial" for the school district to increase the number of internal controls and segregation of duties.

Other deficiencies stated in the audit include: material audit adjustments, annual financial reporting (the school relies on the audit firm to prepare the annual financial report and before the board reviews and approves the audit), bank reconciliation procedures (the audit stated the school should look into implementing procedures to assure accounts are properly reconciled), and ensuring all claims for GHES is in writing.

Deficiencies responses

GHES responded to each of the six perceived deficiencies found in the audit.

Koehn said the responses and corrective action was purposely left vague to allow the school the opportunity to have flexibility. He said if the school were to set up specific steps to correct an action and only did three of a four step process for instance, "we are going to have a finding for not correcting your action plan."

Given the age and size of the school, Koehn said some of the findings are to be expected. While there is little the school can do for some of the deficiencies, Koehn said "some of those simple controls really can go quite a long way," to helping the school become more efficient and limiting mistakes.

Following the presentation, GHES Board Chair Lara Amundson said GHES is in good condition, but has a few items the school will look to address.

"Basically we're OK, we just have some things to fix," she said.