Although he cited a couple of areas of concern, North Callaway R-I Schools' auditor described the district's audit as one of the best he gives.
Jim McGinnis of Gerding, Korte and Chitwood, CPA, started off his presentation to the school board Thursday night by informing members the district had received a clean opinion.
"The scope of the audit was unimpaired, your financial statements were good, we received full cooperation from your staff and the documents provided for us were excellent," McGinnis said, going on to praise Superintendent Bryan Thomsen's Management Discussion and Analysis document. "Mr. Thomsen did a really nice job on this report this year."
One area of reporting in question, though, was the district's claims for reimbursement through the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program and School Snack Program.
"The way the district gets paid by the federal meal program is by turning in monthly claim reports," McGinnis said. "The data (we analyzed) didn't agree with the amounts turned in."
He said his firm looked at three monthly claims for testing, in which he said the data reported to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education did not agree with the district's internal food service reports, which are generated by its database program.
"Some months were high, some months were low," McGinnis said. "All told, the three months we tested were off by $500."
He noted that part of the issue in trying to find a reason for the discrepancies was that the data used to prepare the reports for DESE was not retained after it was submitted.
"I've never seen DESE worry too much about this kind of error, but what they will want is a corrective action plan," McGinnis said.
Thomsen told the board district administrators already are taking steps to ensure such discrepancies do not occur again.
"We added a step to the process, and we are going to retain the data to ensure numbers are accurate before we make the report," Thomsen said.