Officials pause nutrition carryover requests after major bookkeeping mismatches found

County and school finance staff told supervisors in a joint meeting that five separate reporting systems show inconsistent balances for the school nutrition program, and that those discrepancies make prior carryover amounts unreliable.

A finance leader said he "ran the reports out of the county finance system, the school finance system, the reports that the nutrition manager keeps, the audit reports, and the state reports" and that "nothing matches." Because of that mismatch, the official said he will not ask the board for any nutrition program carryover appropriations in July until the '26 audit is complete and reconciliations are finished.

Superintendent-level staff acknowledged pulling state reports themselves because there was no effective liaison previously. Members recommended that, for the short term, the board appropriate only the program's anticipated revenue rather than rely on uncertain carryover balances. "Just to prove what the anticipated revenue is, and that's it," one official said.

The meeting referenced the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the county and the school division when discussing who must provide oversight and sign off on school-related budgets. Members suggested the county could engage a reviewer (the name Cherry Burkhart was mentioned as a potential consultant) to determine which data source should be treated as authoritative and to reconcile differences across systems.

The meeting ended with a plan for follow-up work and a subsequent meeting to continue reconciling nutrition accounts and to finalize any budget recommendations to both boards.