Results of today's Lake County, FL School Board Internal Audit Committee meeting

I was just at the Lake County, FL School District Internal Audit Committee as Committee Chair. We barely made quorum with only 3 of 5 members attending. One member had resigned due to Kristi Burns resigning. We discussed two reports:

• The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) was presented by representatives of CPA firm Purvis Gray. We discussed many items, but it is clear in my opinion that the current District Administration is managing the District finances well. They even have a cash reserve of 10% vs four years ago when they had 3%. Good job, guys.  However, it is important to know that the audit report does NOT address future risks, like inflation, increased fuel and traffic operations over School Board operations, and costs. 
• The District Audit Directors, Tom Mock, presented a new "Millage" internal audit report over whether the School District followed requirements for the 3/4 millage referendum passed by voters to fund school safety, nurses, psychologists, etc. His role was not to provide an opinion on whether to RENEW the tax but to determine if the District spent funds on what they promised, and they did. A tax renewal vote will come up in the future, and it will be up to the Administration and Board to tell voters why they continue to need the tax revenue and to explain the benefits of doing so. But, one clear point was voiced - the tax provided the staff and facilities to REMOVE disruptive students to a central facility with counseling (not available before) and let the remaining students in classrooms focus on LEARNING, vs being constantly disrupted by unruly students. This to me is a HUGE reason to continue funding the programs. So it appears the cost of providing a good education for most students went up and is now proven. Let the Board and Administrators tell you the benefits of continued funding for about 182 professionals (school resource officers, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists).
• We also discussed an upcoming LCSD Board workshop to discuss reasons for adding another auditor, an admin assistant, or increasing outside internal audit contract services. It is my internal audit experience that you need an internal audit for about every $100-million in revenue. But LCSD, with $700+million in revenues, has only the single Internal Audit Director. So, there is a lot of issues left unreviewed, even though the current Internal Audit Director has saved the District millions from his audits alone.
• And, LCSD has no real procedure or standards for recruiting new members to the Internal Audit Committee. I will be presenting at the workshop examples of screening application forms for committee members AND technical criteria used at the County and other cities and a proposal to adopt a process to define experience and knowledge levels for future internal audit committee appointments. Currently, there is no process, and without some recruiting criteria, each LCSD Board member picks an appointment whether they have no audit experience or even a college degree.

Overall, the School District Administrators are running a good ship, in my opinion, but there are pockets of programs and departments, and even Schools that need independent review, which requires more staff.

Cheers,

Vance Jochim