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.