Luverne School District gets positive audit report

The Luverne School District received a clear opinion from auditors at the Dec. 17 School Board meeting, continuing its history of receiving the highest audit rating possible.
Conway, Deuth & Schmiessing has been the longtime auditing firm for the Luverne School District.
CDS representative Brenda Parsley noted the combined fund balance of $25.9 million was down from $38.3 million from the previous school year.
The $12 million decrease is attributed to the district’s ongoing building construction, which had $13.5 million in expenditures.
“Almost half of the building fund has been spent down, which is good — we’re progressing,” district business manager Marlene Mann said about the construction budget.
Aside from building construction, auditor Parsley outlined the balances in the four district funds of general education, food service, community service and debt service.
In the general fund, the district spent $14.2 million out of $14.8 million in revenues, bringing a fund balance forward of $676,861 into the current school year.
The larger-than-expected balance was primarily due to an unfulfilled bus purchase that didn’t take place before June 30.
The food service fund had a deficit of $13,953, spending $543,312 from revenues of $529,359.
From late March through May, no income was generated due to the coronavirus closing school buildings and no meal sales were completed for more than two months.
“COVID-19 closed schools in March so that (deficit) is a big part of that reason,” Parsley said.
She commented that the community service fund almost broke even over the 2019-20 school year with $520,555 of expenditures and $521,018 in revenues.
“This is really good considering the pandemic had a really detrimental effect to other districts,” Parsley said.
To service the district’s debt, $2.066 million was spent during the 2019-20 school year from the $2.154 million generated in revenue.
 
Auditor wants SMART used more effectively
Parsley replaced longtime auditor Jim Gilman of CDS, who recently retired, in presenting the 2019-20 report. Parsley accompanied Gilman during last year’s audit presentation in November 2019.
In her report, Parsley said the completion of the 2019-20 audit was delayed by one month, and that the SMART accounting system could improve efficiencies.
“We are aware that this was a more difficult year with COVID-19 and the building project going on subsequently having the district office relocate for awhile,” she said.
“The SMART Finance system has two features that will help improve the flow of transactions and organize the workload to be more efficient.”
Parsley recommended inputting invoices into the SMART system as they are received instead of waiting until the end of the month.
“This will allow the district to better track accounts payable, accounts receivable, perform bank reconciliations and print checks from the software,” she said.
The accountants also encouraged better accounting procedures for the student activity funds, which are now included in the general fund.
Paisley provided board members forms to accept community donations.
The forms note the amount received and what activity (if any) the donor intended the money to be used toward. Board members would approve these donations each month.