Kimball district audit complete, no major issues

The Kimball School District’s 2015-16 financial audit is complete with no concerns according to Julie Peetz, of Rauner and Associates, who reported to the Kimball Board of Education at their Nov. 7 meeting.

Rauner and Associates has been performing school audits since 1979 and the company has 11 schools in the Nebraska Panhandle.

Peetz did present suggestions to make procedures better. One such suggestion, the lack of segregation of duties, is a standard suggestion, according to Peetz.

“One of them is always the lack of segregation of duties,” Peetz said. “Probably 99 percent of all schools in Nebraska has a lack of segregation of duties because it is not efficient for a school to hire a whole business office.”

According to the report the district’s general fund was at a net profit of $365,000 after transfers to lunch, depreciation and activity funds. The same number for last year was $731,000.

“The two years prior you had a net loss for a couple of years,” Peetz added. “This year and the previous year, you gained some ground.”

Peetz further reported that the State asked the auditor to do additional procedures for membership and attendance.

“This year the Nebraska Department of Ed is concerned about how this school district is reporting its membership,” she reported. “They are concerned that the numbers are being inflated or not being reported correctly.”

After doing seven procedures based on that concern, it was determined that policies were being followed properly.

“So all of those, you passed, and there were no exceptions on the results of those procedures,” Peetz added. “The seventh step was: we had to take your quarterly reports, match them to what the NSSRS (Nebraska Student and Staff Report System) had. Basically, you take your numbers and transmit them onto them. The problem was that the quarterly reports were recreated. There is a lot of difference on what you call your quarter by what your attendance is. So basically we couldn’t complete number seven. We included that in the report and sent it to the state and they understand. They asked for this and I don’t know what kind of results they are going to get and we hope that they are not going to ask us to do it again next year.”

Curriculum and Assessment – Vicki Mitchell

“Our school is rated on that one shot – NeSA (Nebraska State Assessments),” Mitchell said. “All of our disciplines have standards.”

Core content areas include English language arts and math, but according to Mitchell not all all of the disciplines are tested.

“We are just now getting started on the state looking at those standards,” she said. “We will be revising those standards this year and we will be going through everything that math and english language have been doing for the last couple of years.”

Mitchell has reviewed NeSA and NWEA ( Northwest Evaluation Association) data with staff.

“I don’t really have to go over NWEA with staff, every staff member has their own access to the NWEA data, which is wonderful data,” Mitchell added.

She explained that while NeSA is a one time snapshot, the NWEA data includes so much more information and feedback.

“One of the new reports that I give out to our staff is called the new generation report. This new generation report, we can pull up one student and we can see all of their tests they have taken, we can see it for all of the years they have taken. We can look at their graph, and we actually have, this year, for the first time, a projection based upon how they tested in NWEA in the fall. They have taken our state standards and have projected proficiency for that student in the spring for the state standards.”

Mitchell said that information can be used to plan for individual students and the same projection can be formulated for ACT testing as well.