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Auditors give Duplin County Schools a clean opinion; officials flag loss of COVID-era funds
Summary
Anderson Smith & White gave Duplin County Schools an unmodified (clean) audit for the 2023-24 year, but auditors and district leaders warned the board that roughly $8.3 million in COVID-era federal funds will largely expire by Jan. 1, 2025, and the district has set aside $5.2 million for academic recovery and operations.
Miss George, an auditor from Anderson Smith & White, told the Duplin County Schools Board on Nov. 7 that the district’s 2023-24 financial statements earned a clean, unmodified opinion and that the firm found no material weaknesses in internal controls or compliance findings for audited federal and state programs.
“This is what’s considered a clean, unmodified opinion letter,” Miss George said, directing trustees to the balance sheet and exhibits in the audit packet. She said the district’s general fund balance was $6,387,000 as of June 30, 2024, an amount that was essentially unchanged from the prior year.
The audit highlighted how one-time federal pandemic aid has bolstered fund balances in recent years and described planned set-asides. Miss George said the board had assigned about $5,200,000 for academic recovery and operations "to use for funding those future programs," noting the funds are a plan for future spending rather than legally restricted reserves.
She described changes in other funds: the other special revenue fund held $3.5 million (a $1.1 million decrease from the prior year, reflecting planned spending), individual school funds decreased modestly, and the capital outlay fund increased to about $1,011,000.
Miss George warned trustees that federal COVID-19 education stabilization funds and related allotments were winding down. She said combined COVID-era awards totaled about $8.3 million and that most of those one-time revenues will disappear after Jan. 1, 2025, leaving the district to rely on recurring state and local revenues.
Board members acknowledged the message. The chair said the county provided about $500,000 in the audited year and that roughly $1.3 million of the general fund is already encumbered for the current budget, meaning the district will begin to “chip into” fund balance as pandemic funding phases out.
The audit also reported on enterprise-type funds: the child nutrition fund held about $6,151,000 in cash and investments, but operating margins tightened as food costs and labor rose and federal reimbursement rates reverted toward pre-pandemic levels.
Miss George closed by reiterating that the auditors issued clean opinions on financial statements and on federal and state compliance testing. She said the report includes detailed footnotes and exhibit schedules and encouraged trustees to review key pages for the fund-balance and income-statement details.
The board received the audit and had no follow-up adjustments recorded in the meeting minutes. The district will monitor the expiration of federal funds while deploying assigned fund-balance dollars to sustain academic recovery efforts.
