NHP-GCP Schools Get High Scores on 2011-12 Audits

The New Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District is used to receiving high marks from its state-mandated audits, but this is about as close to perfection as one can achieve.

“I’ll have to say, we do 42 school districts and I’ve been doing this for 20 years now, this is the only district that we’ve audited where I have not had any comments in your management letter,” Marianne Van Dyne of the auditing firm of R.S. Abrams said during a meeting of the board of education on October 15 at the Manor Oaks School. “So that goes to show you how strong your controls are; the business office always takes our recommendations seriously, they implement everything that we give to them.”

R.S. Abrams, which serves as the district’s external auditor, gave the district an “unqualified opinion,” which according to Van Dyne is the best a school district can receive.

The external auditor determines if a district’s financial statements are accurate and consistent with accounting standards so that the board can have confidence in using them to assess the financial condition of the district. R.S. Abrams conducted a single audit and audit of financial statements.

“The audit went very well,” she said, complementing assistant superintendent of business Michael Frank and the business office staff.

An external audit consists of four stages: planning with a preliminary assessment of the risk areas, the preliminary audit in January and May where testing occurs, audit procedures on year-end balances and reporting and preparation of financial statements.

Typically an auditor will also provide a management letter detailing recommendations a district is to take in the future to improve the controls over how it conducts itself fiscally, of which Van Dyne had none. In 2011, there was only one comment in the district’s management letter, which was also put into place.

“Your controls are phenomenal, they’re excellent,” Van Dyne said. “We’ve never had a school district where we couldn’t make at least one recommendation and we’ve spent a lot of time with the district, we look at all types of controls, we’re here pretty much 9 months out of the year going through all the different areas and everything really checked out well. We really had absolutely no problems”

Regarding the district’s financial statements and reviews of balance sheets, Van Dyne said that “the school district does have a very sound long-term financial plan,” citing the unreserved fund balance being funded at the maximum of 4 percent of the annual budget and the district’s use of reserves for long-term needs and their ability to replenish them.

“You not only are prepared for the short-term needs, you also are ready for any long-term increases, whether they be employee retirement system, this year this employee retirement system rates are going up 21 percent from 16 percent, so these are things that are happening at the districts and it’s important to plan for those.”

New Hyde Park-Garden City Park also recently refunded several of its bonds, saving $1.5 million in debt service payments over the next 12 years.

“So that was a great philosophy to do now so the interest rates are where they should be so then long-term the budgeting of your expenses for debt service will be lowered compared to if you did not refinance the bonds,” Van Dyne said.

“That’s ridiculously good,” board president Ernest Gentile said of the assessment. “It’s not just the business office and the superintendent, it’s staff; I think they work together and they brought forth this plan and it’s been implemented and everybody’s on top of their game when it comes to our finances here.”

The board also heard from Lauren Agunzo of Nawrocki Smith, the district’s internal claims auditor. Tin internal claims auditor is responsible for reviewing the district’s warrents and inspects every check that the board approves before they are issued to the vendor. They look at the accuracy of the bills, verifying documents, that the district is not paying sales tax and ensures that goods and services are verified by proof of delivery. Nawrocki Smith has served as the district’s internal claims auditor since 2005.

“We basically have a report that outlines everything that we’ve looked at to give the board a feel of exactly what we’re looking at,” she said, including number of claims and dollar values, and increase in dollar value.

The number of claims inquiries dropped over the past 4 years, going from 145 in 2008-09 to 13 in 2011-12. As percentages, there were inquires on 4 percent of claims in 2007-08, 5.75 percent in 2008-09, 4.98 percent in 2009-10, 1 percent in 2010-11 and less than one percent in 2011-12. In other districts the number of inquires ranges from .56 to 8.56 percent.

“It’s very impressive because we do this for a lot of different districts and not many take it as seriously as they do,” she said of the business office.