Auditor gives Aberdeen School District a clean opinion, flags reconciliation weakness in food-service records

The Aberdeen School Board on April 27 voted to accept the district's annual financial audit, which auditors said carried an unmodified, or "clean," opinion while identifying one material weakness in internal controls.

"For the financial statement audit, we gave a clean or unmodified opinion," said audit partner Terry Quist of the firm conducting the audit. He told the board the firm covered the general fund, capital outlay, special education, bond and internal service funds and the food service enterprise. "We do have one finding to report this year and that's going to be a material weakness related to the controls over a reconciliation between the food service software program and the general ledger software program," Quist said, adding that lack of reconciliation could result in errors.

The audit firm also reported unmodified opinions for the district's federal-award testing, citing clean results for the child nutrition cluster (National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs) and special-education programs. Quist said the audit did not identify any reportable compliance errors in those programs.

Board member Mr. Wilson asked whether private schools that might receive state vouchers would face similar audit and public-reporting requirements if they received state funding. "I do not know what would be expected in the future if that voucher were to pass and what the state would require," Quist replied, saying requirements depend on state law and grant terms.

Following the presentation and questions, the board moved and approved the audit as presented.

What's next: district staff will maintain the corrective steps needed to address the reconciliation weakness; the board recorded the audit as public information and approved the report for the record.