The Winn Parish School Board Budget and Finance Committee met on Monday, January 27, 2020. Representatives from the CPA firm Kolder, Slaven & Company, LLC addressed the board to review three reports prepared by their firm.
The firm performed an independent audit of the WPSB’s financial statements and expressed an unmodified opinion which is the highest quality opinion the firm can give according to the presenter.
The firm was also required to prepare an independent auditor’s report on federal awards. The WPSB receives a substantial amount of money from the federal government for programs like Title I, Special Education, Food Service, etc. When a certain amount of money is received the firm is required to audit some of those programs based on the rules set by the federal government. The firm randomly picks a couple of programs and test them for compliance issues. WPSB Management is responsible for making sure they comply with the program guidelines and the firm is responsible for auditing their compliance. The opinion given by the firm was an unmodified opinion and found no compliance findings to report.
The third report reviewed was the independent auditor’s report on internal controls. As a governmental organization, the auditors come in and attempt to gain an understanding of the internal controls to drive the other two reports they issued. They look at compliance of state laws that the Legislative Auditor in Baton Rouge has told the firm could be significant to those controls. The firm does this to drive their procedures not to express an opinion on internal controls or to express an opinion on compliance. If they were to find anything that they considered significant of material it would be noted and brought to the attention of the board. They had no significant or material findings to report. Even though the firm does not express an opinion on this, no findings are considered relatively clean and a positive result.
The representative went over a high-level view of the WPSB’s finances for the year ending June 30, 2019. Most notable was the fact that the WPSB has been successful in moving toward the goal of having a six-month reserve in the General Fund. They currently have close to three months’ reserves.
You can see the entire report here.
