At Tuesday’s regular meeting of the Stanly County School Board, Mike Wike from the accounting firm of Anderson, Smith and Wike reviewed the audit of the financial statements from the 2018-19 academic year.

Wike said four opinions are issued with the audit: the actual numbers on the balance sheet, overall compliance of the district with internal controls, compliance with the money received from the state of North Carolina and compliance with federal funds received.

According to Wike, the four reports were unmodified and were in accordance with the accounting standards.

The only significant deficiency listed in the audit was a significant oversight of not having resolutions passed by the board to transfer funds between different public resource codes (PRCs).

“If you shift money between PRCs it needs to be an amendment to the board,” Superintendent Dr. Jeff James said. “Prior records showed that wasn’t occurring.”

State comptrollers spent four months going through Stanly County Schools’ records and said there was nothing wrong, James said.

Wike said the SCS instructional fund essentially broke even. He advised the board could add more to its fund balance, but the balance did not go backward.

SCS’s food service program actually made money this year, Wike said, which is a rarity with the local education agencies (LEAs) the company has worked with in previous years.

A four-year schedule which Wike said summarizes the contributions SCS has made to the state’s retirement system, including to the pension fund and the post employment health care benefits, showed Stanly gave $6.15 million three years ago but that number increased to $8.2 million last year.

“This is what we’re seeing in almost all of the districts throughout the state,” Wike said. “And that’s what puts the challenge on the districts is the overhead mandated by the state of North Carolina along with any additional wages or raises mandated by the state.”

At the same time, the federal government may not increase the funding, putting the burden on local education agencies to find the money in their own fund balances.

Stanly also presented a comprehensive annual financial report, a higher level of report, to reporting agencies for the first time. The district received certificates of excellence in financial reporting.