Trussville board adopts budget amendment and receives clean audit

The Trussville City Schools Board of Education approved a budget amendment to carry forward fiscal-year 2024 ending balances into the current year and heard a final audit that auditors said resulted in an unmodified opinion.

The amendment, presented by Chief School Financial Officer Jim Kirkland, shifts ending balances from the completed fiscal year into the 2025 budget and incorporates state grants and other funds that were not in the original budget. Kirkland described the change as routine but necessary for state reporting and year-end accounting.

Independent auditor Jason Hart of Carr, Riggs & Ingram told the board his firm was issuing an unmodified opinion, the cleanest standard. Hart said the district’s general-fund balance rose by about $11.5 million at year-end and that the general-fund balance is roughly six months of operating reserves, above the 30-day minimum the state requires.

Kirkland told the board the district’s general fund shows $64,000,000 in revenues and $69,000,000 in expenditures in the slide he presented, producing an $11,000,000 difference that largely reflects money rolling forward from the prior year. He identified roughly $5,000,000 tied to an A&T budget line and about $4,000,000 related to an Ainsworth grant for softball as the principal components of that $11,000,000.

Hart reviewed audit procedures and cautioned that financial reporting incorporates many estimates, including pension and other postemployment benefit assumptions; his required-communications letter to the board addressed those and other standard audit topics.

The budget amendment was included in the meeting’s consent agenda and was adopted by voice vote without recorded opposition.

The audit presentation fulfilled the district’s statutory audit requirement and set the financial context the board used in subsequent decisions on personnel and compensation.