School boards look at how well they monitor finances
Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008
BENTON COUNTY — Financial problems in the Decatur School District has caused at least one local school board to ask itself if there is anything its own members should do differently.
The Bentonville School Board discussed the issue briefly Monday night during its monthly meeting. Board President Travis Riggs, who witnessed Decatur’s July 31 Arkansas Board of Education hearing during which Decatur faced annexation, broached the subject.
Riggs said last week in an interview with The Daily Record that he doesn’t bring up the subject because he’s lost faith in the Bentonville school administration. Riggs said that board members are good to ask questions and that they trust the school district employees to give consistent answers.
“ It’s just a good discussion we ought to be having, ” he said.
Just how board members receive information was a point that was brought up during the Decatur hearing. Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James said school boards should expect financial reports that are generated from the state’s auditing system. Riggs said that while he understands that logic, sometimes it isn’t always practical. For example, in Bentonville, board members often receive reports that take information from the state’s auditing system and present it in a different form to best answer the board members’ questions.
During Monday’s discussion, Bentonville board members agreed that they trust the information they receive from their administrators, but they would like to better understand how it is translated from the state auditing system into the reports that the board members receive. The matter is now expected to be discussed at a future planning session for board members.
The board members will also receive information that Riggs asked for during Monday’s meeting, including steps that school district administrators take to prevent problems similar to what happened in Decatur and any other forms of fraud, collusion or other financial problems.
The Bentonville School Board’s belief that the district’s financial matters are being handled appropriately is shared among other school board members regarding their own school districts. The Daily Record discussed the matter with each school board president in Benton County last week, and their answers were similar.
Gravette School Board President Marion Harris said his board also already gives a lot of scrutiny to financial reports. He added that from what he heard during the Decatur annexation hearing, Decatur board members were also asking questions and just receiving faulty answers. He felt that the scrutiny school board members received from the state school board was slightly unfair.
“ The information they got was incorrect, ” he said. “ That’s what makes timely audits so important. ”
Rogers School Board President Joye Kelley said in her many years on the school board, she’s seen the level of protection against financial problems grow. For one, she said, the district now uses an independent audit. Part of the frustration in Decatur’s situation is that the state’s auditing system is about one year behind. Decatur’s audit for the 2006-2007 fiscal year is just now about to be completed. Some believe that if audits are done in a timely manner, it would be easier to find problems before they get too big.
“ With a district our size and with our growth, we felt we needed to not find out (the audit results ) several years later, ” Kelley said of the decision to have an independent audit.
Keith Harper, Gentry School Board president, has also been on his board for many years. He said Gentry has also increased its efforts to prevent problems over the years.
“ I believe we’re doing a pretty good job of staying on top of things, ” he said.
School board members in Pea Ridge and Siloam Springs said they believe their districts also have good practices in place to prevent financial impropriety.
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