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by Mary Kay Morrow
The Hickman
Mills C-1 School District is being audited by the state.
Audit
Manager Todd Schuler from the Missouri State Auditor’s Office announced last
Thursday the state will conduct an audit of Hickman Mills for the 2011-12
academic year just now wrapping up.
“The Hickman Mills School District
has been selected to go through an audit by the Missouri State Auditor’s
office,” Schuler said. “At this point, we really don’t have an agenda, per se,
as to what we plan to look at.”
As of
Monday, Senior Auditor Rick Stuck began the Hickman audit process by coming
into the district with a team of two or three people to do survey work, meet
with administrative staff, talk about policies and procedures, and ultimately
put together an audit plan.
Schuler
explained the decision to audit the C-1 was not based on concerns about the
district.
“Most of
the time, audits like this are brought about by concerns that are expressed by
citizens or the petition process. That’s
not the case here,” Schuler said.
He said
that although the district has struggled on the financial side the past couple
of years, it is not to the point of major concerns.
“As far
some financial reporting information, comparatively, it looked like this might
be a district that might be looked at from our office,” Schuler said – adding
that decisions regarding which districts are audited are made in Jefferson City above his
level.
The State
is currently conducting several St. Louis-area audits, recently completed an
audit in Springfield,
and has done others in past years.
“We just
finished an audit of the Kansas
City School District
in 2011. We audited Grandview - probably five or six years
ago. And I did an audit of the Liberty School District several years ago,”
Schuler said.
The scope
of the C-1 audit will be the year ended 6-30-12.
“We try to
focus on the most recent time period,”
Schuler said. “That’s not to say that we
will not possibly look into something that’s happened in the near past.”
Once the audit team completes its report, they will review it with the
board in a closed setting, “which is allowable under the Sunshine Law - to make
sure we have everything accurate, that there are no mistakes, and make
clarifications,” Schuler said.
After that, audiors will ask the board to respond to their
recommendations before releasing a final report to the public.
“The whole audit will culminate with the release of a public report that
will include any recommendations that we make,” Schuler said.
How long the audit will take depends on what the team finds once they get
started.
Schuler hopes they have something by the end of this calendar year but
admits that’s a guess.
“We don’t have an end date,” Schuler explained. “I’m not exactly positive how long this will
take. Typically an audit of this nature can take anywhere from two to four
months as far as fieldwork goes. And
then we have to go through a report process.”
He went on to say that if they don’t find a lot of issues, they’ll wrap
things up - but if they find some concerns, it may take longer.
“But in the end, we will report what we have found, the items that we
deem to be of interest and need to be reported publicly,” Schuler said.
Schuler invited board members and administrative staff to contact him to
discuss “issues, concerns, areas that you would like us to take a look at,
provide some input, and possibly make some recommendations on ways that we can
improve policies and procedures, or controls, here in the Hickman Mills
School District.
“We would love to sit down,” he said.
“By all means, give me a call.”
The state would also like to get as much input as possible from citizens
with areas of concern.
“For citizens, if anyone has any issues as well from a citizen’s
standpoint, by all means, I would urge everyone to contact our office,” Schuler
said.
“If you go to our website, there’s a hotline where you can get in touch
with me. My name is Todd Schuler. The
website is www.auditor.mo.gov”
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