The regular annual audit of the St. Landry Parish School Board found a few issues, records show.
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor maintains annual audits of all public entities in the state, and sends out a weekly report noting reports of interesting. The School Board made that list this week.
Here's the Legislative Auditor's summary:
"In his report, the independent auditor noted that in August 2022, officials discovered a Promethean Board (interactive whiteboard) had been stolen from Opelousas Middle School. Law enforcement was contacted, and a police report was filed. The board had not been recovered as of the date of the audit report," the summary states. "The auditor also found that the school board failed to amend its budget when revenues of the Head Start and ESSER III funds and expenditures of the ESSER II funds exceeded the amount budgeted by more than 5%, as required by state law. In addition, the board was late in filing its financial statements with the Legislative Auditor’s office."
If you want to read the audit for yourself, scroll down.
As is customary, the School Board's response to the findings was included in the audit; school officials said they agreed with the findings and planned to address them.
Financially, auditors reported that the board's overall revenues exceeded expenses by $32.2 million during the 2022 – 2023 fiscal year; the General Fund budgeted $124,734,140 in revenues for the fiscal year but the actual revenues at the end of the 2022-2023 fiscal year were $131,500,881 resulting in a $6.7 million increase from the amount originally budgeted.
These increases were as follows:
Ad Valorem Taxes – revenue increased over $925,000 from the original budget
Sales Taxes – revenue increased over $2.1 million from the original budget
Other – other revenue decreased over $150,000 from the original budget
State Sources – revenue increased over $1.6 million from the original budgeted amount
Federal Sources – revenue increased over $2.1 million over the budgeted amount
The budget was properly amended to within 5% to account for this increase.
Spending also increased, but not enough to eat up the increase in revenues:
General Fund budgeted $127,218,362 in expenditures, but actual expenditures at the end of the 2022-2023 fiscal year were $129,807,511 resulting in a $2.5 million increase from the amount originally budgeted.
The rest of the audit - including dozens of spot checks of accounting, record keeping and other duties, found few "exceptions," or instances where things weren't done properly. The audit notes no exceptions in auditors' review of credit cards, payroll, travel accounts and the removal of terminated employees from the IT system.
Among the few exceptions found was one bank statement that hadn't been reconciled two months after it was received; an employee who hadn't received ethics training and a failure to provide the School Board with written updates about how staff was addressing findings from last year's audit. The audit also noticed that the board's finance committee had never received monthly budget-to-actual reports.
Here's the audit:
