001Okay. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the monthly work session of the East Rockaway Board of Education. I'd like to call this meeting to order at 6.05 p.m. At this time, can we please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Next on the agenda is old business. Okay. I do have some old business. The fact that a friend. colleague will not be at the next meeting. I want to acknowledge and recognize the needs for our service to not only the kids, the students, and the community, but to this Board of Education and this team. She was a valuable member who is known for
002providing both sides of each story, of each story we had, and we had a few stories, I guess, right? And so I just want to present it with a plaque that says in recognition and appreciation of three years of board work and dedication service to the East Rockwood Public School. I'd just like to give this to you and thank you for all. Thank you. Take a picture? Yes. Take my glasses. Pete, get in there too. You want to come up, Pete? Sure. I get you. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Enjoy. I guess we can call it retirement. Yes, that's it. Okay. Thank you so much. And that's it for old business. All right. Okay. So next, the audit committee. Great. Next. Okay. Thank you. IF YOU DON'T REMEMBER I KNOW WE ONLY
003GET TO SEE EACH OTHER A LITTLE BIT MY NAME IS DAVE TELLIER I'M THE WANTED PARTNER WITH RON SMITH UH I HAVE A I PUT TOGETHER A REPRESENTATION THIS IS JUST OUR PLANNING MEETING THIS IS KIND OF UH WHAT YOU THROUGH SOME OF THE THINGS WE'RE GOING TO DO SOME OF THIS STUFF THAT I GOT TO REFORM YOU WITH THE NEW UH COUNTING STANDARD THAT APPLIES TO THE TO THE DISTRICT UM BEFORE WE GET STARTED WITH OUR END OF THE FIELD WORK AND I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN BACK IN OCTOBER REPORT ON THE AUDIT AND THEN WHAT TO THROUGH ALL THAT SO JUST TO QUICKLY GO THROUGH THIS PRESENTATION FIRST PAGE IS OUR SCOPE OF SERVICES. NOTHING HAS CHANGED AS OF RIGHT NOW FOR OUR SERVICES. WE'RE GOING TO FORM THE AUDIT OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR
004THE YEAR IN THE JUNE 30TH, 2026. AS OF RIGHT NOW, WE'RE ANTICIPATING TO DO A SINGLE AUDIT OF THE DISTRICT'S MAJOR FEDERAL REWARDS, BUT BECAUSE OF MAYBE REDUCED FUNDING AND ALSO THE THRESHOLD HAS INCREASED FOR THIS YEAR. TO TRIGGER WHAT'S CALLED THE SAME AUDIT, A COMPLIANCE AUDIT. WHEN WE COME IN FOR FINAL FIELD WORK RIGHT NOW, WE FEEL LIKE WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT, BUT IF FOR WHATEVER REASON THERE'S SOME INPAKE OF MONEY THAT PUSHES OVER THAT BREADSHOLE, THEN WE WILL GO AHEAD AND DO THAT. OF COURSE, WE'LL KEEP YOU CLOSED IN WHEN I SEE YOU NEXT TIME. WE'LL DO THE AUDIT OF THE DISTRICT'S EXTRA CLASSROOM ACTIVITY FUNDS AS WELL FOR THE YEAR IN JUNE 30TH, 2026. I can go through all the work if we have any suggestions on improvement
005of patient internal controls, got the general weaknesses, significant deficiencies, we'll report them to you at our next meeting. And again, we'll present tonight and we will present again in October. The next page is just what is our audit plan. Nothing has changed here. I kind of call it our four-pronged approach. We're already almost, we're probably, you know, starting the second prong of things. So our first one is planning. In May, we got to go through, speak with management, develop our procedures, kind of change some things around or look at it a little bit different on some aspects. a change of what we've been looking at. And then we jumped into our preliminary procedures this month, which is trying to verify and go through a lot of the transactions, make sure everything is being adhered to
006with district policy, they're being accounted for appropriately, what our expectations are, things of that nature. And then we roll right into our final audit procedures and then going into financial report. The next slide is just our proposed critical needs schedule. As I mentioned, we did some of our preliminary audit procedures already. Last week, we're starting to go through some of those things with management. Then the district's going to go through their year-end close, and then we will be on site the middle of August to perform our audit procedures. It should be about a week. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer because the state... doesn't put out some of the information that we need that pertains to the district until you know it's usually the middle or end of august um even sometimes into september
007um but once we get all that information i have to finalize numbers and start directing the financial students um which we just talked about obviously you are on october 13th um which is when we'll go through everything so we can file the credit deadline the next page does some of the preliminary order procedures that we perform um Again, we try to get done with as much of some of our work that we could possibly do before the end of the year, because like I said, we're going to be on site for a week. It seems like it's a long time, but it goes very fast. And we've got to do a lot of the ERAM procedures, which is really substantiating and auditing the final numbers. So leading into it, we do all of our transactional
008testing work. We look at capital expenditure testing, single audit testing. We're going to go ahead and do that preliminarily. And then we do some of our other procedures, which kind of revolves around journal entries, budget transfers, things of that nature again. verifying that things are being accounted for appropriately and segregated into the appropriate accounts obviously looking at any reports that have been issued whether it's from the internal auditors or any oversight that district may have and then looking at that and seeing if we have to take any of that into consideration with our financial students Slide five is just one of the things that we've talked about that we've been required to do is kind of give you an idea of what some of our final order procedures are. What do we do to substantiate
009year-end balances? Some of it is very simple, like cash. We confirm cash. We send a confirmation to the bank. They tell us what's sitting in the bank as of June 30, and then we compare that to the bank reconciliation that provides us, and then we go through all the reconciliations. Those are on the easier end. Some of the more difficult ones is where there's like compensated absences where we're looking at calculations, contracts, and trying to calculate daily rates and things of that nature that we've got to go through and make sure that's been done appropriately. So again, these are just some of the things that we do. It doesn't mean that's all that we do, but some of the things that we do in the various areas. The last few pages is just what I
010wanted to kind of highlight for you really, because the rest is probably free. straightforward from year over year. Nothing really has changed. But what will change is what's called GASB statement number 103. This is really an update to GASB 34, which started about 20 years ago, which is what kind of reformatted the financial statements into these two sets of financial statements. That's the full accrual and the fund-based statements. So what this has done is kind of created an update to that presentation. where it's for the district, it's going to affect you in really two ways. One is the management discussion and analysis section. I know you guys have heard my spiel every year. I talk about how the MD&A section, but that's the acronym, is a very good section to kind of read, get a,
011you know, you could read it in about five minutes or at least glance it over and it gives you a really good understanding of what happened here at the district. What they're doing is really trying to focus in on the content of the MD&A will be the same. What happens is that they're really focusing on not using generic answers for why things increase and decrease and really trying to give the reader a better understanding of what really transpired and what drove certain increases and decreases in things. So now it's kind of taken away, and not that that's what we were doing, but that's, you know, a lot of other municipalities were, but we will be adding in a little bit more. I'll call it color, into some of the areas where we can elaborate a
012little bit more on changes, things that happen, stuff like that. We're going to actually be creating maybe another little area within it that talks about the fund level statements. So this was my personal issue with GASB 34 and the MD&A is that it really focuses on the full approval statements. I'm walking you through the financial statements. I'll actually point this out. But the majority of the beginning of MD&A really focuses on the full accrual. Whereas, you know, I've talked about other post-employment benefits, OPEB, and then the TRS and ERS systems, now adding that in. Competitive absences, which we added in two years ago, a little bit more diligently. Those all can... really swing some of the numbers one way or the other, depending on the year. There have been times where we've had assets that
013we've recognized because of the valuation of the TRS program and ERS program. And then there's been years where it's been at 94% funded. So we have been a huge liability. It's good information. It's all in accordance with gadget standards, but it doesn't necessarily affect the industry in a cash sort of sense. We get our bill. We get our bill for retirement. We pay it. said and done, you know, and it's built in the budget and we report it. So when we met with Gatton, I attended a seminar where it was the Gatton rep, I was talking to them and I said, you know, for my clients, like school districts, the full group statements, yeah, they're nice, but they don't really give a good picture to the reader. I think it should be focusing on the
014fund level statements, like the general fund and really going through that. which they agreed, not that that's how it's written in MD&A, but she said we have latitude as the municipality, as the district, as the auditors to change that around. So we're going to look to do that. So we feel that we're really giving good content to the rebate. And then the other portion of Gatsby 103 that changes, we've always had the budget actual schedule. Again, that was the second thing I've honed in on with you guys is always look at the budget versus actual schedule. It's in the back. It kind of tells you how the general fund operated. It's operating off of this was the approved budget. What did we spend? What did we take in? Where did we end up at the
015end of the year? So what they're changing for that is we're going to add in another column to kind of look at variance analysis. All right, well, this was the original budget. This is where we ended up. This was the actual. How, where were we all? You know, again, looking at where are there significant increases and decreases. where there are significant increases or decreases, we now have to provide some dialogue to that point. So they'll be like either at the bottom of the schedule or nobody's in that schedule right behind it in the financials that we'll talk about. you know, general support went up by 5% because of what, you know, like, well, kind of like, kind of dictate that, give a little bit more information. Again, it's all good stuff. You know, I like
016this statement only because it's improving upon something that should have been done a while ago. But it is going to take us working with management to get some more information, really, put in there that makes sense. And again, it's good work for that. Can I ask a question? Yeah, of course. So what is the significant variances you have here greater than 1% of the ? Yeah, we were kind of looking at what would make sense. You can highlight everything. Yeah, you can highlight everything. And then we also look at materiality, things that, oh yeah, it had a swing up. The account was only budgeted for $5,000. We got $50,000. I don't know if we really have to talk about that. we're saying right now we're looking at that but i think once it comes to
017the end we'll have to look at it together and say you know what makes sense for us too um you know maybe talk about a little bit more um and then that you know so that's not a definite number that's just did you say it's a good idea for me to start using that as a framework for the types of accounts that we should be looking at it's like writing up the uh yeah and that's what we kind of talked about here like the district getting prepared ahead of time looking at this and this is only gonna You know, one of the things that we do in our procedures is analytical procedures where we look at the variances from last year to this year and budget for sexual and we send them to you. All
018right. Well, what are the kind of explain these to us so that we know what we're looking at? That's going to really build. So, you know, into the financial statement. So that kind of like the full circle of what we're going to be doing. It sounds like to me that. The explanations will be more user friendly to the public. It's making a form of spirit of more transparency. Yeah, that's it. And user friendliness. Okay, that's good. There's other changes to the statement, but like I said, they're not going to really affect the district. Those are the two areas that are really going to, you're going to see a difference in what our report is from last year to this year. That's it. that was quick thank you very much yeah we saw it did i
019i thought fast but i tried to get all that content in there we like that questions from anybody or no thank you very much thank you thank you thank you very much you guys enjoy your summer yeah in october thank you have a great summer thank you you too good night um Next is review minutes of special meeting on 519. Are there any questions about the special meeting? No. Okay. Review of minutes of the regular meeting from May 27th. Any questions about that? No. Okay. Questions on the next board agenda, the June 16th meeting? No. No? Okay. All right. I guess that's it. Did you get anything else to add in? No? Okay. All right. Well, I could mention one thing. Yeah, go ahead. The next board meeting on Tuesday is the PTA installation. So
020if you want to come out and support the PTAs, that'll be our presentation at the meeting. And it'll be great to get the community involved and great to welcome our new members into the PTA. So that'll be 7 o'clock on 16th. What's the date? Yeah, on June 16th in High School Auditorium for our PT installation. All right. Okay. All right. Can I have a motion to... Can we adjourn this work session to go into executive session to discuss contract negotiations? Can I have the motion at 6.21 p.m.? Motion. Motion by Mrs. Salufo. Second? Second. Second by Mrs. Lonergan. All in favor? Aye. Motion approved. Good night, everyone. Good night. All right.