Principals are rehired

Decatur School District receives good marks in audit

— School board members voted to rehire elementary school principal Leslie Sharp, high school principal Bobby King and special programs coordinator Dawn Stewart at Monday’s meeting.

Board members went into executive session for more than an hour to discuss the decision. The three administrators were not called into the session for questioning.

After the regular session resumed, board members passed a motion to renew the threecontracts with the same salaries, conditions, number of days and terms.

In other business, superintendent Larry Ben reported the Decatur School District received a positive report fromthe Joint Legislative Audit Committee for the 2009-2010 school year.

“We really had a good audit,” superintendent Larry Ben said.

Auditors worked with district treasurer Terry Burden to review the school’s finances for more than a month last summer to prepare the annual audit report, Ben said.

The only negative finding in the report was that the district does not have enough employees to segregate accounting duties for proper internal control. Ben explained that the finding is very common in small districts.

“It’s my understanding this is a very common finding for small schools. We have divided duties as much as possible and we’ve done the best we can with the people we can,” Ben said. “It all has to do with checks and balances,” he said.

Auditors want all the accounting duties to be compartmentalized, according to district treasurer Terry Burden. For example, only one person would be responsible for payroll and another person wouldbe responsible for paying vendors. Even if the district hired three more employees, it may not be enough to please auditors, she said. The school will likely continue to have the samefinding in the future, Burden said.

Ben said he wrote a response letter to the audit committee to address the concerns.

The law requires the board to review the audit and take appropriate action on any findings, he said. Ben recommended the board’s action be to support the response he had already filed. The school board voted to accept the corrective action and recognize the letter.

“We’ll just expect to see it again next year,” said school board president Ike Owens.

In a management letter, the audit report also noted the Decatur School District paid $5,000 to an institution of higher learning on behalf of a student after receiving this amount from a business owned by the student’s parents.

The money was donated to the school for a scholarship and that given to the donor’s child, Ben explained.

“Since these funds were available only for this student, the district acted as a pass through entity forthese private funds,” the management letter states.

Ben said the school would no longer take any scholarship money that was specified for a particular student.

Other actions taken by the school board included:

◊The approval of a contract with The Learning Institute, for $13,957, to provide math, science and literacy resources for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. TLI helps teachers assess and track student achievement targeted toward Benchmark and End of Course exams.

◊The approval of a 2011-2012 District Calendar. Under the calendar, school willbegin on Aug. 15 and let out on May 15, with a full week of Spring Break. There are five snow days built into the calendar, after which, snowdays will be added to the end of the school year.

◊Approval of large items to be sold at auction on April 16. The school board is required to approve the sale of items that had a value over $2,500 when purchased. The items approved included a 1999 Chevrolet truck and a fifth-wheel travel trailer.

◊The approval of a financial advisory agreement with First Security/Beardsley Public Finance. The financial firm will provide free financial training to the school board by Dan Lovelady for the next three years. In exchange, the board agreed to issue any new bonds through Beardsley Public Finance during the three-year period.

◊The approval of an April study session for Common Core State Standards.

News, Pages 1 on 03/23/2011