District earns clean audit for fourth consecutive year

In 2017, Clovis Unified School District recorded a clean financial audit report for the fourth year in a row. (Daniel Leon/Clovis Roundup)

For the fourth year in a row, Clovis Unified’s financial audit report has come back clean.

While the news may not seem too exciting, it is quite a feat for a district that serves 43,000 students. Typically, districts will at least have one or two minor findings in an audit report and these findings can be honest little mistakes such as not submitting fundraising monies within 48 hours or miscalculating what was raised by a particular school site or ASB (Associated Student Body). In fact, prior to the last four years, minor findings like these were common in Clovis Unified.

Michael Johnston, the Associate Superintendent of Administrative Services, said the streak of clean audits can be attributed to the hard work of everyone within the district, not just those working in the finance department.

“It’s rather exciting that we have an audit report like this for four consecutive years with no findings,” Johnston said. “For a district of our size that is amazing. You don’t see that across the state. Usually a district does have some findings in attendance or ASB and sometimes there are other findings within a district that need to be addressed. It goes without saying, I give credit to our business services and administrative team, but I also have to give credit to this entire district and every employee within the district because it is not an audit of just business services, it is an audit of our entire district and all our staff members out there collecting funds and dollars. Everything we do is examined and this is a credit to everyone and every administrator in this room that they are doing a great job with their staff.”

Johnston also motivated the business and administrative services staff to step up their game in training staff district wide so there would no longer be as many ASB findings as there were previously.

“When I came to this district, we did have ASB findings,” Johnston said. “I remember the board giving us direction to clean up these ASB findings and we worked really hard at doing that and we’ve continued to do it for four years, and we’ll continue to strive for a clean audit every year.”

Outgoing board president Sandy Budd commended Johnston, his team and the district as a whole for their hard work in maintaining clean financials this past year.

“This is something you don’t find in districts, especially school districts of our size, so kudos to you,” Budd said. “The board did challenge finance a few years ago. The things coming back from the audit reports – before they were clean for four years – were things we were seeing at sites managed by foundations and things that individual school sites were doing. In those audits, the findings weren’t things that were coming from business services, but you were the ones that put things in place to make sure these things weren’t happening out there and it has worked. You have buy in from everyone and we just appreciate the great results you have and the way to run the business of our district.”