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External auditor gives clean opinion but warns UCPS is operating on a razor-thin margin
Summary
UCPS received a clean, unmodified draft FY2025 audit opinion; the auditor said net position overstates available cash and the district has only about $16 million available against a roughly $450 million operating budget.
The board received a draft FY2025 financial statement and a clean, unmodified audit opinion from external auditor Adam Shaperick, who warned trustees that the district is operating on a narrow financial margin.
Shaperick told the board the statements "accurately reflect the net position and the fund balance for the school system as of 06/30/2025 and for the year then ended," but he cautioned that net position (about $143 million) includes the value of long-lived assets and is not the same as spendable cash. He said the district recorded a prior-period adjustment of about $70 million related to sick-leave accounting required under recent GASB standards, a change that affects reported net position but not cash on hand.
On the fund level, Shaperick reported the general fund's total fund balance at about $8,273,000 (a decrease of roughly $1.5 million) and an "other special revenue" fund balance of about $8,316,000, together leaving roughly $16 million available to appropriate. He said the district's operating budget is approximately $450,000,000 and that a usage of about $700,000 of fund balance left the district near breakeven for the year. "You're in a mode of basically spending what you collect in the current year, no more, no less," he said.
Shaperick reviewed child-nutrition and other enterprise funds, noting the school food service fund had cash on hand of about $6,675,000 and that participation and federal reimbursements (about $11,570,000 this year) drive program sustainability. He said the district resolved a prior finding related to exceeding budget in the food-service fund and that no material weaknesses were identified in internal controls or compliance letters for state and federal programs.
Board members publicly thanked the auditor and finance staff for the clean opinion and for keeping the budget close to projections.
The presentation was informational; the board did not take any formal financial actions at the meeting.
