001e e e all right we're going to go ahead and start I'd like to welcome everybody everybody to our uh March 4th 2025 work study and brief board business meeting we're going to call this meeting to order and we will jump right into our agenda 2.01 fiscal year 2024 single audit reporting package Dr McCord thank you Mr President govering board members as you see before us we have Jackie maton over finance and uh our associate superintendent Bonnie Betts over business services and I imagine they're going to tag team this and the next one probably too right yes so there is only one presentation though we're going to move right into 2.02 as part of this presentation so will hesitate for a second if there's any questions but it's really one presentation so so good evening
002president Thompson governing board members Dr McCord so Jackie and I are here to oh thank you yes yes Jackie and I are here to discuss the single audit report results as well as the usfr compliance questionnaire which is an entity specific to ad uh to Arizona and Arizona Department of Education and the auditor general so um so uh today's report we'll share the results of the single audit report and then we'll show the uh share the results of the compliance questionnaire and then Jackie will complete the presentation talking about the best practices that we that we have um in place here in the finance office so first the single audit report so the single audit report is required for district spending in excess of $750,000 in federal funds so it is very specific to federal
003funds uh in for this year the single audit report did result in an audit finding in 2024 related to the emergency connectivity fund which which was a new Grant application for Gilbert Public Schools I wanted to share with you that the Gilbert public schools has a a very comprehensive internal control uh framework and that framework is intended to both avoid an error but also detect one so in this particular case our internal controls were not set up to necessarily um uh find the error before it find the issue before it created the error but the internal control related to our external auditor did detect it giving us the opportunity to correct the issue and so that's what we'll talk about tonight so these are the audit finding details so the new ECF Grant again emergency
004connectivity um fund Grant and that was uh in this particular case it was applied for during school year 2122 so two years ago and it was awarded on December 11th of 2023 so during fiscal year 2024 this grant generally we would not have applied for we do not have the demographic that made us eligible however due to the pandemic they opened up the rules and it was strongly recommended To Us by our um consultant uh that we go ahead and apply for it and so this was something new for Gilbert Public Schools so uh we did receive the res uh reimbursement of over a million dollar in January of 2024 and but the purchase order referenced on the original application which was submitted in May of 2022 did include um Federal sr3 fund expenditures of
005$141,000 $141,000 445 uh for Chromebooks uh resulting in the federal fund then reimbursing another Federal fund because Esser was identified on that purchase order and had we had the internal control established where we were reviewing the applications before they were actually submitted we of course would have seen that immediately and asked them to choose a different purchase order so that was the um the general finding um so we will definitely make sure right now that we provide Financial oversight of all state we're going to apply it to State as well as Federal fund applications and we'll require Finance approval prior to submitt of any application initiated by any District department or School regardless of who is actually um helping us create that application so um and that's this process I wanted to make sure that
006you knew has been implemented and now we are applying it to our e applications as well and um so again it's our internal control worked because we have a external audit and they detected it and now we're able to fix the issue so it does not occur again and that is all that we have regarding that single audit and we're very happy to answer any questions that you might have regarding that finding so I I did have one question so now we'll oversee and just review those applications before they go out to make sure that that just one more set of eyes to make sure there aren't those kind of Errors that's correct okay thank you and again just to be clear there is potentially $141,000 at risk that we may have to return to
007the federal government but just a reminder we did receive over a million so it was still a very positive occurrence that we applied for the grant because we were able to receive um just under $900,000 worth of Chromebooks to assist our students here in Gober Public Schools you can take it out of our board salaries okay thank you thank you for that I appreciate the assistance can I ask so so did we receive a million dollar from the federal government for this like we we paid for the Chromebooks and then we received a million dollar correct and so as of now we don't we don't know whether we're going to have to pay that back or not we do not know and is could that have money been used for something else well the yeah
008the issue is that had we had we had the internal control setup where we would have reviewed it prior to submitt we would have found another purchase order that didn't reference Esser so that that that we could have had another $140,000 worth of Chromebooks yes that's correct so is there still an opportunity to amend that and submit a different purchase order there is not we we went through that road and we we begged borrowed stole prayed um to no avail Finance people should never use the word stole I just G to say that bargain bargained bargain yeah that's probably yes yes I was just going to say that that we we are always on top of our finances to the best we can in a very complex system and we always try to use that
009money very wisely yeah the issue too that it was applied for back in 24 it wasn't back in 22 it wasn't clear whether we would get it even though we were encouraged to apply for it and we didn't get notification until 2 years later that just adds some complexity to the issue when it's a you receive the funds two years later so so at this point are we just we're just waiting we're just waiting that the auditor general or the state department of Ed will act and let us know probably as soon as we as soon as you all uh approve the single audit and we send it up to the Department of Ed and the auditor general and then we'll see what happens and we'll be watching it closely so the people who decide
010understand that there was other things this could have been applied to right sure because I mean that would possibly influence their decision sure sure so let me clarify based on um Dr Robinson's question so we received over a million dollars but it's only $44 ,000 that are at risk this is in question about the appropriateness of that part of the it was definitely not appropriate that what's in question is whether they're going to request that it be returned okay all right thank you okay okay with that I am happy to hand over the 2024 uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire portion of this presentation so go ahead Jackie thank you Miss I will dri drive if you like okay thank you perfect uh so as Miss Betts mentioned the uh 2024 uniform system of
011financial records is I kind of think of it as our Playbook if you will this portion of the audit really gets into our day-to-day grind and and in into the weeds of coding and revenue and things like that so um of 171 yes or no questions that's it it's either yes or no that's the only way the Auditors can answer we had nine no answers of non-compliance so um I don't think we would ever see a district with zero because they'll just keep looking uh but for a district this size only nine is pretty remarkable so I would like to send a shout out to my team um it is really quite impressive um their to speak to their commitment to compliance so we had um two findings in expenditures one was the one that
012we just talked about in the single audit the other one was we had a student Club account that ended the year in a negative balance of $126 at the year end part of our year-end process is moving fuel expenditure reclassifying fuel expenditure to the schools and departments this particular student fund um Club had spent all of their money then we did the journal entry um and we fixed it but at technically at June 30 it was in the negative so that was the other one so we will certainly check balances after we do all of our year-end work in the future and then under fundraising uh this is a management procedure finding I'll call them findings but they're not findings uh this it refers to our policy um that the governing board approve all student
013Club fundraisers this is not this is a new finding for us but we haven't changed our process we haven't taken that away from the governing board there was just a a heightened awareness this year on the audit in this area so we will bring this to the policy Committee in April and most likely we'll provide you a type of fundraiser list to approve um and possibly delegate depending on what the polic policy committee decides and I would say I don't think we've ever approved at at that at the board level I mean the Administration has approved but it's always a little tricky because the statute will say the board should approve but then you know I mean it's like says the board should build buildings we don't build buildings but um you know it's a
014little tricky to decipher whether it should be something that we actually do or we leave it to the administration to do that kind of approval which is what we've done they've always been approved but more at the administrative level that is correct and that's the type of stuff we'll talk about in policy to be able to give that uh breath of authority when it comes to something like that okay and we have hundreds and hundreds of student clubs that do fundraisers so do you want questions now at the end oh please as you go so on the expenditures on the on the student Club I mean that that seems like a really easy thing to happen like I'm surprised it doesn't happen more and so what I guess what are the controls were there controls
015in place and it still just happened or did we put controls in afterwards cuz that seems like an easy error to have happen the system actually will not allow an expenditure out of a out of any account um other than payroll Nothing Stops payroll uh but Student Activities when they try to put in a purchase order if there is no money the system will not allow it allow the user to move forward so there definitely is some some balance there some checks and balance also when the requisitions come to finance for approval um um you know we check to make sure the accounting is correct and there's budget available or cash available in this case um this resulted because we did a journal entry so that was um an entry that we did in the
016in the general ledger there was nothing to stop that from happening because it's a it's a reclassification of an expense um if there was a different type of fund that ended in the negative uh let's say of Student Activity um auxiliary operations for example field trip fund that rolls up into one fund in our general ledger as far as the Auditors are concerned but the Student Activity accounts are all individual accounts so this one particular out of the thousands that we have ended up in the negative and that is an audit finding in this case yeah well no it's it's remarkable that it's just one do do the clubs know that they need to keep a certain amount for that allocation for the fuel after because it seems like they see in their account oh
017we have $200 to spend they spend it and then the allocation happens after it seems like that would happen frequently uh yes most of them carry a balance and they are aware of the fuel for those for those uh clubs where the fuel charge would apply so it is a relatively new process the last three years we've begin begun allocating out fuel charges happening through um through Transportation um so it's I mean I we would have easily found it had we been looking and so that's the added step that we will do once we do a journal entry is we will be sure that we're looking thank you you're welcome uh so next up is accounting and coding uh during the year end process again to clear some stale liabilities one liability was charged to
018Food Service fund which is required to use a different function in the usfr um than 1,000 and we accidentally charged it to 1,000 so um it was an incorrect combination in our account code structure each account code has 25 numbers and there's seven elements and it's kind of the square peg round hole situation if you will um so the 510 fund doesn't go with the 1,000 function um we have hundreds of thousands of account codes in our system uh they all tell a story but there are rules around what can go with what so that's a another check that we will uh do at year end that was a direct result too of turnover staff turnover so we have um three new staff members um in finance right now and we had quite a few
019of our accounting team um separate all at once so it's it was directly during that time it was over the summer and so um got to give our staff members time to learn the rules so and they didn't leave because of us they didn't leave because of us of course not so next up is property control and inventory we had two no answers here uh the district is required to maintain a stewardship listing of all items over $1,000 um and perform uh inventories on that against that list so during the audit review there was a discrepancy with three of the items at one particular School two were on the list and not found at the school one was at the school and not on the list um but these are old items all of them
020were under $2,000 each so chances are they were disposed of years ago and you know just improperly um so then the system didn't catch up to know that they were disposed of and then also uh due to staff turnover an inventory was not completed within the three-year cycle at mosquet high school and we now have a new a new schedule and we are on track and then finally student attendance so um two of these three findings the absences were not calculated correctly and the third was a withdrawal date um on the form didn't match the student information system and these are uh relatively common findings in student attendance and then finally of Celebration we did have several areas of the usfr compliance questionnaire of 100% compliance uh budgeting cash and revenues there were 30 questions
021related to that uh 26 questions related to procurement uh payroll and HR financial reporting Information Technology um all were 100% compliant so we're happy about that that's great and then we wanted to share the history of the no answers in the usfr compliance questionnaire when I returned to Gilbert in 2018 we had 29 um the report has changed a little bit but now we're down to single digits so we just wanted to send another shout out to to my team we're um very proud of this okay and then best practices uh the finance department will review and approve all state and federal grant funding submitted by all departments and schools Student Activity fundraisers will be approved by the governing board by type annually and we'll talk about that more in policy committee Financial processes to
022include inventories and prop prop control will be consistently reviewed and updated expenditures and account code compliance will re be reviewed monthly actually it's reviewed daily as we see um expenditures requests um for epars come through and then student attendance trainings are offered numerous times throughout the year uh for new staff they are required to attend so our attendance team is very good about that and finally we will need your roll call acceptance on on 6.01 and 6.02 for both of these reports are there any other questions why do these reports require a roll call vote instead of our standard it was changed statute a couple of years ago maybe two or three years ago it used to be a roll call Vote or a just an ordinary vote but it was changed by the legislature
023I think about 3 years ago so it calls for a roll call vote I wonder what the I don't know what the reasoning was behind if you can understand the legislature please explain it to me I think in in the past I don't know that there was a was an acceptance or an approval of any kind for these for these right so I think the the state and rightfully so wanted to make sure that the governing board is aware of these so yeah so there's probably many school districts that in the past hadn't even presented the single audit nor the um the usfr compliance questionnaire so this mandate that it be presented to you I have a I have a question for the the history of us doing these questionnaires um you know it has
024gone down over the years are they asking the same questions and are the areas that we you know had no on last year are they the same as this year or they different great question the the the questions have changed over the years um they've increased and decreased over time over many years um but the last few years they're very very similar there isn't anything Earth shattering they do sometimes change the verbiage a little bit they'll add some take some out uh a couple years ago there was a big focus on Information Technology um those all of those findings are cleared now so it just um kind of rotates rotates through uh the coding is very common student attendance is very common just because of the of the amount of data that we have and
025and then how do we um you know I know there's going to be uh things in place to kind of fix some of these issues how are we reviewing it to make sure that like you know it gets fixed and it doesn't become a problem in the future well that's where I work with my team we go through the go through the findings first of all um we all have a copy of the usfr chart of accounts and we make sure that we review that before we add new account codes um or create a new process for setting up account codes um so it's just it's just a matter of training and communication they also go through training with with attended Specialists principles those on campuses um to make sure that those th those things
026are getting put in the right way kids are getting coded the right way when it comes to like I said to the attendance side but also there's often turnover in those positions year over-ear and and so um human error occurs and that's what 99% of this stuff is and so um they do a really nice job of trying to make sure everybody's up to date and then checking that data to make sure it's as clean as possible but sometimes things get missed or get uh input the incorrectly so it's a lot of data lots of so and I think um if you look at the student attendance findings that's the most difficult ones for us to control at the finance office we have one student accounting professional actually two we have two student accounting professionals
027at the district level but there are attendance clerks at every single school that turnover as Dr McCord shared um and so that's when where the errors are occurring is at the school we don't have a lot of control over that so we can expect to regularly see student attendance issues but the property control inventory issues we should be able to resolve account coding as well is something that could absolutely happen again the finance off office and the procurement office reviews thousands and thousands of purchase orders every year it's very probable that one of those will get through again where we'd have that finding again but generally the expenditures the fundraising approval once we take that to the policy um the property control and inventory we should be able to eliminate those um in the future
028for sure thank you you bet are there any other questions okay then we will go ahead and adjourn uh the work study portion of our meeting tonight and move on to our brief board business meeting call this meeting to order and ask Miss Wilson to do a roll call Mr Chad Thompson here miss sha Murray here Dr Blake Robinson here miss Jill humph here Mr Jesse rard here Mr President Alor members are present you have a quorum thank you Miss Wilson uh moving on to agenda item number five our consent agenda item our our consent agenda is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as it is outlined on our agenda this evening so moved thank you Mr brard is there a second second thank you Miss Murray uh all those in favor of
029approving tonight's consent agenda as outlined on uh our agenda tonight do so by saying I I I any opposed and that passes 5 to zero thank you and moving on to our action items 6.01 uh fiscal year 2024 single audit reporting package uh is there a motion to uh to approve the fiscal year 2024 single audit reporting package excuse me president Thompson It's actually an acceptance versus an approval thank you very much is there a motion to accept the 2020 fiscal year 2024 single audit reporting package I move that we accept thank you Miss Humphries is there a second second thank you Dr Robinson is there any discussion regarding this uh agenda item that we haven't already discussed okay then we'll ask Miss Wilson to to uh perform a roll call vote Miss Jill humph
030how do you vote I Mr Chad Thompson how do you vote I Mr Jesse Brainard how do you vote I Dr Blake Robinson how do you vote I miss sha Murray how do you vote I Mr President all board members have accepted the thank you Miss Wilson moving on to 6.02 acceptance of the fiscal year 2024 uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire is there a motion so moved thank you Miss humph is there a second second thank you Mr brard uh is there any discussion regarding this agenda item tonight okay thank you I'll again M ask Miss Wilson to uh to call for a roll call vote m hre i Mr Chad Thompson I Mr Jesse Brainard hi Dr Blake Robinson hi Miss Shaya Murray hi Mr President all board members have accepted thank
031you again Miss Wilson and that brings us to our final agenda item uh number seven adjournment is there a motion to adjourn so moved thank you Mr brard uh and I will second that and all those in favor of adjourning tonight's meeting say I I any opposed thank you very much