Albuquerque Public Schools audit committee reviews fiscal 2025 audit plan, timeline and risks

The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education Audit Committee on June 24, 2025 held an external audit entrance conference with CliftonLarsonAllen LLP covering the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, including audit work for the William W. and Josephine Dorn Community Charter School.

The audit firm’s engagement manager, Sheila Quintana Filosa, CPA of CliftonLarsonAllen LLP, told the committee the audit provides “reasonable but not absolute assurance” that the district’s financial statements are free of material misstatement and that auditors would follow a risk-based approach. Quintana Filosa said auditors will test areas with higher inherent risk — including revenue recognition, management override of controls, cash, restricted fund balances or net position, and accounting estimates — and highlighted that implementation of a new GASB standard on compensated absences adds implementation risk this year.

Why it matters: The entrance conference set the audit scope, the areas auditors plan to focus on for governance oversight and a timeline the district will use to produce statements and address potential findings. The committee and auditors discussed options for how repeat findings are reported and whether dashboards or near-real-time reports could help the board monitor issues between annual reports.

CliftonLarsonAllen’s team and responsibilities Sheila Quintana Filosa introduced the CLA engagement team and explained roles: Laura Beltren Schmitz, CPA, will serve as engagement principal; Quintana Filosa will manage the engagement; Geneva Choi and Lin Feng will perform single-audit and financial-accounting work, respectively. Mark Turnbull, CPA, executive director of accounting for Albuquerque Public Schools, was introduced as the district contact for accounting matters.

Quintana Filosa described the respective responsibilities: governance oversees strategic direction and financial-reporting oversight, management oversees internal controls and accounting policies and is responsible for representation in the financial statements, and auditors are responsible for forming an opinion under generally accepted auditing standards.

Audit risks and standards Quintana Filosa told the committee, “There are some significant fraud risks that are part of our audit,” and noted the firm will evaluate both the risk of fraud and risk of error. She said inherent and detection risks exist because audits rely on sampling and analytics, so some items could be missed. She specifically flagged:

- revenue recognition and potential management override of controls; - areas requiring estimates (for example pension or liability estimates); - cash and restrictions on fund balance or net position; and - this year’s implementation of a new GASB standard related to compensated absences, which raises a higher risk that the standard could be implemented incorrectly.

Audit timeline and deliverables Quintana Filosa summarized the timeline provided to the board: the planning meeting (June) begins onboarding and request lists; preliminary procedures and risk interviews occur in June–July; interim procedures and sampling also occur in June–July; field work is planned for September–October; auditors will review the district-drafted financial statements in October–November; CLA expects to provide an approved draft to the district by Nov. 1 with a goal to submit final reports to the office of the state auditor by Nov. 15.

She also said CLA will hold monthly audit meetings if items fall behind or if potential findings emerge and invited governance to raise areas of focus or suspected fraud to the auditors.

Board questions and follow-up Board member Josefina Dominguez asked how to forward questions and material to the auditors, saying, “So, Miss Quintana Filosa, how do I get these questions to you?” Quintana Filosa replied that some questions had been forwarded and that CLA will report repeat findings per the audit rule; she said CLA’s digital team could build dashboards or reports if the committee wanted a multiyear or near-real-time view, but that such dashboards are typically outside the standard audit scope and would require a separate discussion.

Formal actions and next steps The committee adopted the meeting agenda and approved the minutes from the April 22, 2025 audit committee meeting; Board Member Sarah Shonka McCoy abstained from the minutes vote because she said she was not present at the prior meeting. Chair Courtney Jackson announced the next audit committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 22, 2025, at 5 p.m., and that meetings stream on the APS Board of Education YouTube channel.

The audit entrance conference focused on setting expectations and timeline; auditors and district staff said they will return with more detailed findings and monthly updates if issues arise.