And I I heard some buzzwords that I really love to hear is deescalation, restorative justice and things of that nature, even a mental part. So again, this is a good thing here. And I do have one question. If a student was late to class because they stopped to pet the dogs or engaged with the dogs, do they get a pass? They do. Oh, really? Okay. Well, thank you. I I love it. And I want to publicly apologize to Dean Hall for completely ignoring him and going straight to biscuit. That was I love bus interiors. No, thank you. Thanks to all of you for the presentation. This is great. And u when's biscuits contract up? We need to work on the three days a week. So half days I think. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks again guys. Um, with the way society is changing and evolving, this program is extremely important, especially coming out of the pandemic because the kids, not only the kids, the staff are trying to learn how to be together again.
So, appreciate everything you guys are doing. Great job. Thank you. Uh, Mr. Hall and Mr. Seamson, could you just parade the dogs around so the board members can say hello and then I was gonna say no biscuit stealing. Thank you everybody. Yes. Okay. Come here, Lucy. So, you're you're the hard worker, huh, Lucy? Yeah. Excellent job. Yes. Very good. Thank you, Biscuit. Part part- timerr. Yeah. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. Good night, guys. All right. Yeah. In just a few minutes, we'll continue with our presentations. As you know, so much about what goes on in So much that goes on in the school district is so much more than the academics. It is about the social emotional, the connections and so forth. Um, and I do believe that we're seeing the the change in our some of our uh disruptive behaviors is because of this multi-layering of programs.
I I can't say that's one or the other. It's all of it together. And uh certainly we've got a fabulous staff that's highly committed to to working here uh with all of our students. He is he's got to go get an extra day off. But as we take a step back further, what brought this all about was our strategic plan, believe it or not. Um and we don't want to forget this is the anchor of all of our work. All the equity work, all the inclusiveness, all the really seeing our students came from this plan that we did as a community. And so we're really proud of the work that we're doing and we can see some of the fruits of this come together. Now, as you recall, our plan is set to res retire in 23. We are almost done with our plan and uh probably in um it'll be retired in June of 23.
So we are going to have to start working on our next plan probably in spring of 22. So we're we've almost come full circle on this. But to make sure that you know we honor everything that we have said as you know we have a dashboard that is on our district website and every year all of our directors all of our principles we are all working on these components and they're all embedded with everyone's uh goal setting process. So, every year we kind of plug away. We have different priorities. And I've asked Miss Perkins tonight to really share where we're at in this plan. Some of the things we've already finished, some we're still working on, but I wanted you to see where we're coming, where we're at at this point. We'll give another presentation probably in the spring, and then we'll show you where we're we're closing up the plan.
So, I'm going to turn this over to Miss Perkins now. Go ahead. Okay. Uh good evening um to our board, to Dr. Cognese, to our students, families, communities, and staff. Um before we get started on the strategic plan, um I do want to uh say thank you to our veterans. Um we will not be able to honor them this year as we normally would in our schools. And so they usually come out to our schools and the kids perform and do assemblies and they speak. Um but because of the pandemic this year, uh we will not be able to do that traditional honoring of them. Um now that I have to go after um Biscuit and Lucy, we will see if you can uh stay awake. So we do um like Dr. Coglin said, "Thank everyone involved in completing the task of the strategic plan.
It truly takes the entire district. Everyone plays a role in this living and the delivery of this plan." This fall update um will give you how we're moving the needle and the metrics of our goals. Some strategic action plans are impacted by the pandemic. This means that we have either had to delay or make adjustments. However, we remain um on track to get everything completed in our target date of June of 23. And though these times are challenging and unprecedented, our teams of teachers, paras, service providers, central office administrators have worked tirelessly to create better outcomes for our students, communities, families, and staff. The strategics plan vision and objectives reflect academic, financial, and operational data. It views the objectives that serve as our guide to action and it allows staff members to consistently work towards specific and measurable performance goals. On the following pages from goals one to six from strategies A to Q, our metrics are updated and we use our feedback to adjust our course of action.
So you'll see with strategy one um we're moving that needle again at 100% towards each of those strategies and I can go through there's 77 of them and I will not take you through 77 but if you would like for me um the board members receive this information and if you would like for to have some specific information um I will I will go back and uh give you that information. Um what I can say is what's next when you see that the needle hasn't completely reached 100%. Um I'll talk about you know what's next is that we will continue to work on that plan. Um for instance in strategy A we are going to continue our professional development of our school leadership teams our administrators and um analyzing our data. We will continue to monitor our school improvement plans towards our achievement and growth for our students.
And where you see that 50% under strategy A um we will look to form a committee to look at standardsbased grading in the 22 23 school year. When you do see 100% that does that means that we are still continuing that work because it doesn't stop. Um, but we have reached all of the tasks and strategies that are listed there. And I know the board received a copy of this. The public, if the public is in interested in um looking at the dashboard, it's right on the front page. At the bottom of the page, it says dashboard. Um and then you will see the same um needles and goals um and metrics that you see here. I wanted to talk about um I'll talk about F um for a moment where it talks about foster awareness and respect for individuals and cultural differences to enhance relationships among between students and staff.
Um and this will also go with uh strategic in uh where we are ensuring teaching culturally responsive responsively um by holding high expectations for all of our students. Uh we are using diverse resources and collaborating to ensure the success of our students and our staff. uh we are using and beginning to use our student voice and their feedback in our practices and depending on um students for their experiences and their interest as we connect to their learning. Um and this has a lot to do with our equity training and as the buildings are building their own equity plans that also feeds into uh strategy in uh that talks about providing um using a diverse staff to make sure that everyone is included.
Any questions? That's it. Like we said, it's an enormous amount of information, so we didn't want to read to you, but we did want you to see that basically we are making tremendous progress on this and we will report back to you in spring um where we're at because next year then we will finish it off. Thank you, Miss Perkins. Thank you. Okay, I think we go into the business section. Yes. And uh we are very delighted to introduce item number one for you tonight, Mr. Surma. Well, good good evening board. Good evening, Dr. Cage, public staff, and everybody. Um I I'm just going to start right in because I know you're really excited about talking about the audit. So, uh we do have Susan Jones here who is from uh the firm of Miller Cooper. She is the lead auditor and principal at Miller Cooper.
And so she's going to give you an update of where we're at with the audit, uh, a couple findings, and I'm going to distribute to you our estimated financial profile summary. So you have that also as Susan is talking. So Susan, I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay, great. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. So, um, as Ken mentioned, I just want to give you an overall status update of where we're at with the audit. Um, right now we're in our final phase. um all the deliverables that we will issue to the district is um in our final review and quality control phase and probably in a week or so we'll give Brian and Ken um what we call refer to as an incomplete work product so they couldn't review it. It's an extensive document over 100 pages. there's actually going to be uh four documents and um and then they'll be able to read through that and then that's where they'll create their management's discussion and analysis that goes in front of the financial statements.
Um but you know we're here in November. Um I've been here in February and March. Um so you know the the business office has really made a lot of progress the last couple years um with improving processes. um when we started the audit um they were substantially ready with all our requests which um you know has never occurred since we've been the auditors. So um we really thank the business office team for all their cooperation um during the audit. Um Ken did pass out. Um we plan this is the anticipated results um after all our reviews go through. Um but the district um looks like it'll have a 3.7 um financial profile score which um that means that they'll get the uh designation of recognition which is the highest um designation the district can receive. Um the other designations are review, early warning and watch.
Um, out of the five categories, all of them are a four, which is the highest, you know, numerical amount. The one that's really just bringing the average down from a four to 3.7 is the debt margin. There's obviously a lot of debt out there against um the statutory debt limit. Um, we plan to issue an unmodified opinion, which is the highest level of assurance the district can receive. Um there was one new Gazsby statement that was adopted um during this year's audit which is Gazsby 84 which all Illinois school districts all school districts had to adopt. And basically that what that did is just bring the student activities fund into the education account or the general fund. Um so that caused a restatement of the financial statements. Um that's not an error. It's just how the new accounting pronouncement had to be adopted. Um all significant accounting policies and um financial statement estimates are all recorded in the financial statements and we concur with management's methodologies.
Um you know Miller Cooper is independent of the district. Um and um we are required to report to you any um differences that we identified that were not recorded. Um we did record an audit adjustment related to two voided checks that totaled um close to a million dollars and basically um those were written in 2020. Um because they were voided and there was a pickup of income during this fiscal year. Um it is a recorded audit adjustment but because that was revenue that should have been recorded last year um that's something that we have to disclose to you but we concur with management. It's it's immaterial and overall net position at the end of 2020 is properly stated. Um Ken did mention uh we do we will issue a management letter which is just a recommendation of enhanced procedures and controls. If you recall last year there was about eight material weaknesses.
Um, one of the biggest ones was bank reconciliations weren't done on a timely basis. Um, for fiscal year 21, the bank reconciliations were done on a timely basis. So, that is no longer uh a material weakness. Um, when you receive the letter, we do have four material weaknesses um down from eight. So, um the business office staff is continuing to improve on um the processes. Um the most significant ones are just there's certain reconciliations of account balances that continue to need to be done on a timely basis related to property taxes and then reconciliation of federal and state revenue and making sure they're recorded in the proper accounts. Uh the other one relates to um segregation of duties. um because the business office is concentrated really in a couple individuals. Um there's not a lot of checks and balances. So um the the business manager has access to write checks, um access to the check stock, also prepares the bank reconciliations, um also has access to record journal entries.
And so when you have access to the asset and also access to the general ledger to make changes, that's what we consider as segregation of duties issues. Um so the district should continue to work on kind of segregating some of those duties. So those conflicting duties um just to protect that there's no mistakes are caught or there's no um manipulation of um data. Um, we also did a single audit in in addition to the financial statement audit, we did do a single audit and as it relates to the single audit, there were no compliance findings. Um, and last year there were some findings. Um, that concludes the presentation.
Does anybody have any questions? What What is a single audit? So, um, when the district expends more than $750,000 of federal re revenue, um, that triggers what's referred to as a single audit. Okay. Um, and we have to determine out of all the federal dollars and expenditures the district expends based on uh, an audit program provided to us by uh, the government, the OM. We have to select some of those programs and do specific testing on it. Okay. And does that get supplied back then to the federal government or agency? So after all the deliverables are issued, the financial statements, um the single audit, the management letter, and our required communications letter, um majority of those documents are put in the federal clearing house, which is a database that um the district has to upload. And then all the federal agencies that you receive money from has access to that information.
Okay. And obviously with the ESR funds and things like that, um we actually tested an additional program this year because you had more federal expenditures um because of some of that um additional money the district received. And we'll probably have to test um similar programs next year because you're expected to receive some more federal dollars. Okay. I'm sorry. Um, the snapshot of this audit, what period, what year is this for? This is 2020 2020 for the year ended June 30th, 2021. Oh, 20. Okay. So, so has this been recorded on the state on the Illinois State website? No. So, this that's just a schedule. um we haven't issued any of our so the four deliverables that we will issue is the um audit of the financial statements and we perform the audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards and governmental auditing standards. So once it goes through all our quality reviews we will issue a final report.
Um, we will also issue our required communications letter. Um, which I've that's what I'm talking about, the significant findings of the audit and then our management letter and the single audit. So, and that will be filed with ISBY and the federal clearing house um before December 15th. Okay, that's what I was going to ask. So, what's going to be reported? So, what's being shared on the website right now? Is it nothing related to 21 to so okay so we have until December the 15th to get this information to the state that's definitely saying okay so what I'm seeing here number two correct me if I'm wrong the number two is basically saying we have a balanced budget we had a balanced budget for the end of fiscal year 2021 is that what they're saying and what are you Um uh number two on the on the sheet here.
Oh, I don't know if you have this. I'm sorry. Um Oh, yeah, I do. That's just a um so that's a this is a page out of the annual financial report, the AFR that's filed with ISBY, which is a a document that it's a template that ISBY um a format that ISBY requires the um district to file. And this is just a formula that the profile score is based on. Right. But but we're saying we are going to send this information to the state and we're saying that we have more revenues than expenditures. That's what that's what's being captured here. It is it is being captured. Mr. Brown, please keep in mind though that is only in certain funds. It's not across the board. So the the financial profile is only within your operating funds. Mhm. And so you'll see that there where it classifies talks about under number two that you'd mentioned the second column it talks about fund 10 20 and 40 are your expenditures but your revenues are from 10 20 40 and 70.