McHenry County Blog

Huntley School District 158 got its audit results for last fiscal year ending June 30th last week.

That’s about two months after the final budget was prepared and approved in September.

But where is District 300’s Audit?

Try finding it on D-300’s web site.

Maybe you will have better luck than I did.

Or, more likely, it isn’t there because it isn’t finished.

Does it amaze you how school districts finalize their official budgets before they know what the audited results are from the previous year?

At least Huntley got its auditor to promise to get it done in September. Not that that promise was kept.

I looked at the letter District 300’s auditor wrote last year.

Does insufficient internal controls sound good to you? Doesn’t to me.

Outside auditor Virchow Krause and Company wrote only about the deficiencies it described as “material weaknesses.“

“During our audit, we noted that existing, written policies and procedures for internal control were not in sufficient detail “

The auditor made it clear that what they did would “not necessarily identify all deficiencies in internal control that might be significant deficiencies or material deficiencies.”

If the audit firm isn’t hired to find them all, then who is?

Well, no one.

This wasn’t a topic of discussion when administrators wanted a big property tax increase.

If you are a District 300 board member, how apparent is it (from reading what the auditor wrote) that there needs to be more sufficient safeguards?

Check it out yourself. Here’s the management letter in the audit. Click on “Download” after this link comes up.

What’s interesting in this letter is that the auditor explains how it is the auditor who is doing the final preparation of the district’s financial statements.

I thought auditors audited books prepared by the entity being audited. That’s what happened when I was McHenry County Treasurer.

Tough to find anything wrong with numbers you, the outside auditor, yourself prepare.

Apparently District 300 only keeps the books on a cash basis and has to pay an audit firm to do the accrual accounting…done, it seems, only once a year well after the fact.

You would think a large school district as large as Carpentersville’s would be able to do the accrual accounting and report those numbers on a quarterly basis when they might be helpful for management purposes.

Apparently not.

When it audited Huntley School District 158, Virchow Krause and Company took about 11 months after year end to finish an audit a couple of years ago.

Think any District 300 school board members up for reelection want an unfavorable letter coming out about internal controls before the school board election?

In the last letter to management from the auditor (after linking, click Download), District 300’s auditor found that fiscal management continued to be several months behind in reconciling its bank accounts and books.

When I was county treasurer, my bookkeeper Oral Herendeen did that every month. Over a four-period she was off $10 and that was a counterfeit bill grabbed by the Federal Reserve. She and my chief deputy, predecessor and successor as county treasurer Audrey Walgenbach certainly had accuracy down pat.

Huntley School District 158 got its audit results for last fiscal year ending June 30th last week.

That’s about two months after the final budget was prepared and approved in September.

But where is District 300’s Audit?

Try finding it on D-300’s web site.

Maybe you will have better luck than I did.

Or, more likely, it isn’t there because it isn’t finished.

Does it amaze you how school districts finalize their official budgets before they know what the audited results are from the previous year?

At least Huntley got its auditor to promise to get it done in September. Not that that promise was kept.

I looked at the letter District 300’s auditor wrote last year.

Does insufficient internal controls sound good to you? Doesn’t to me.

Outside auditor Virchow Krause and Company wrote only about the deficiencies it described as “material weaknesses.“

“During our audit, we noted that existing, written policies and procedures for internal control were not in sufficient detail “

The auditor made it clear that what they did would “not necessarily identify all deficiencies in internal control that might be significant deficiencies or material deficiencies.”

If the audit firm isn’t hired to find them all, then who is?

Well, no one.

This wasn’t a topic of discussion when administrators wanted a big property tax increase.

If you are a District 300 board member, how apparent is it (from reading what the auditor wrote) that there needs to be more sufficient safeguards?

Check it out yourself. Here’s the management letter in the audit. Click on “Download” after this link comes up.

What’s interesting in this letter is that the auditor explains how it is the auditor who is doing the final preparation of the district’s financial statements.

I thought auditors audited books prepared by the entity being audited. That’s what happened when I was McHenry County Treasurer.

Tough to find anything wrong with numbers you, the outside auditor, yourself prepare.

Apparently District 300 only keeps the books on a cash basis and has to pay an audit firm to do the accrual accounting…done, it seems, only once a year well after the fact.

You would think a large school district as large as Carpentersville’s would be able to do the accrual accounting and report those numbers on a quarterly basis when they might be helpful for management purposes.

Apparently not.

When it audited Huntley School District 158, Virchow Krause and Company took about 11 months after year end to finish an audit a couple of years ago.

Think any District 300 school board members up for reelection want an unfavorable letter coming out about internal controls before the school board election?

In the last letter to management from the auditor (after linking, click Download), District 300’s auditor found that fiscal management continued to be several months behind in reconciling its bank accounts and books.

When I was county treasurer, my bookkeeper Oral Herendeen did that every month. Over a four-period she was off $10 and that was a counterfeit bill grabbed by the Federal Reserve. She and my chief deputy, predecessor and successor as county treasurer Audrey Walgenbach certainly had accuracy down pat.

Compliance with Huntley School Board policies is apparently for students, not Huntley’s fiscal administrators.

School Board member Larry Snow along with board member Aileen Seedorf got a board policy (4:15) put on the books that says financial irregularities have to be reported to the board of education and to the superintendent.

It was obvious at last Thursday’s Board meeting that compliance with that mandate remains but a theoretical concept.

Not something actually practiced.

Mandatory disclosure missing even when written into board policy is obviously not being practiced four years after the scandalously referendum tax increase that the media labeled a deception.

Hardly progress if you ask me.

Superintendent John Burkey has been on the job three years. Obviously, the fiscal aspect of his supervision needs improvement.

And, not telling the board of a serious lapse in internal controls…how does one explain that.

Did the district’s outside auditor voluntarily disclose how he found a lapse in internal controls at the beginning of his presentation?

No.

In fact he made no presentation. Outside auditor Paul Thurman of the firm Evans, Marshall & Pease, P.C., simply said he didn’t have anything to say and immediately opened it up to questions.

The lapse in internal controls that had about $150,000 extra erroneously sent to the State (in July alone) wasn’t mentioned until Larry Snow started asking questions about internal controls in the fiscal office.

The written report the auditor gave the board made had no mention whatsoever about internal controls.

It was only after Snow had asked very precisely worded questions exposing errors in the audit report that Snow asked about what he found about “internal controls.”
At this point, the auditor said a future letter, as yet unwritten, would show a lapse in internal controls resulting in about a couple hundred thousand dollars being sent to the State as an overpayment error.

Whether the auditor would have routinely disclosed this to the board, as he said he was going to, is anyone’s guess.

It was apparent he didn’t disclose it before being questioned by the board Thursday night. It is certainly less likely that someone would ask a question, if nothing was volunteered about internal controls.

Four years after a deceptive referendum, you might think the board majority was actually going to start the practice of having the fiscal office and superintendent actually start telling the entire board of education about specific lapses in internal controls.

Guess not.

About $110,000 was spent under a guise of a forensic audit that was selectively unforensic.

Part 2 tomorrow.

Compliance with Huntley School Board policies is apparently for students, not Huntley’s fiscal administrators.

School Board member Larry Snow along with board member Aileen Seedorf got a board policy (4:15) put on the books that says financial irregularities have to be reported to the board of education and to the superintendent.

It was obvious at last Thursday’s Board meeting that compliance with that mandate remains but a theoretical concept.

Not something actually practiced.

Mandatory disclosure missing even when written into board policy is obviously not being practiced four years after the scandalously referendum tax increase that the media labeled a deception.

Hardly progress if you ask me.

Superintendent John Burkey has been on the job three years. Obviously, the fiscal aspect of his supervision needs improvement.

And, not telling the board of a serious lapse in internal controls…how does one explain that.

Did the district’s outside auditor voluntarily disclose how he found a lapse in internal controls at the beginning of his presentation?

No.

In fact he made no presentation. Outside auditor Paul Thurman of the firm Evans, Marshall & Pease, P.C., simply said he didn’t have anything to say and immediately opened it up to questions.

The lapse in internal controls that had about $150,000 extra erroneously sent to the State (in July alone) wasn’t mentioned until Larry Snow started asking questions about internal controls in the fiscal office.

The written report the auditor gave the board made had no mention whatsoever about internal controls.

It was only after Snow had asked very precisely worded questions exposing errors in the audit report that Snow asked about what he found about “internal controls.”
At this point, the auditor said a future letter, as yet unwritten, would show a lapse in internal controls resulting in about a couple hundred thousand dollars being sent to the State as an overpayment error.

Whether the auditor would have routinely disclosed this to the board, as he said he was going to, is anyone’s guess.

It was apparent he didn’t disclose it before being questioned by the board Thursday night. It is certainly less likely that someone would ask a question, if nothing was volunteered about internal controls.

Four years after a deceptive referendum, you might think the board majority was actually going to start the practice of having the fiscal office and superintendent actually start telling the entire board of education about specific lapses in internal controls.

Guess not.

About $110,000 was spent under a guise of a forensic audit that was selectively unforensic.

Part 2 tomorrow.