Dell City ISD Gets Good Audit Report – District Fund Balance Grew $260K in 2014-15

Dell City ISD bookkeeping is sound and the district’s financial status is strong, according to a report from the district’s independent auditor.

Belen Briones, of El Paso-based accounting firm Gibson Ruddock Patterson, presented the audit report for fiscal year 2014-2015 at a meeting of the Dell City school board Thursday, Dec. 17.

Briones’ firm offered a clean or “unqualified” audit report – meaning that auditors had no serious concerns about district financial management for the 2014-2015 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. The auditors did point to small but persistent problems with how certain expenditures at the district have been “coded.” District staff must record each expenditure according to a system of codes set out by the state, and auditors said some expenditures had not been categorized correctly.

Dell City ISD Supt. Fabian Gomez said district staff would be attending additional training on coding procedures. But he said the audit results show that financial management at the district is fundamentally sound.

“There are always going to be findings,” Gomez said. “If there aren’t, the auditors aren’t doing their jobs. But the main thing is that the money is there – it’s all accounted for. The revenues and expenditures are all accounted for.”

The district’s general fund balance has grown in recent years – and it grew significantly during the last fiscal year. At the end of the fiscal year, the district had almost $1.2 million in its fund balance – an increase of about $260,000 from the previous year. The fund balance was about $900,000 in 2013, and $760,000 in 2011.

Expenditures at the district came in under budget, by about $20,000. But revenues significantly exceeded expectation. In property-tax and other local revenues, the district took in $170,000 more than  anticipated, and funding from state and federal programs exceeded budget expectations by more than $60,000.

Gomez said the increase in state and federal funding was attributable in part to increased enrollment at the school – and state and federal payments to support career-and-technology, special-needs and English-language-learner instruction. In the fall of 2013, school board members voted to hire the Lubbock law firm Perdue Brandon to help collect delinquent property taxes, replacing an El Paso firm that had served the district before, and Gomez said the firm’s success in collecting delinquent taxes accounted for some of the increase in local revenue.

“For a district our size, the fund balance is really healthy,” Gomez said. “The state requires that you have at least three months of operational expenses on hand – we have five months.”

In fact, Briones recommended that the district spend some of the money from its general fund.

About $250,000 of the general fund was dedicated by the school board some years ago for construction – for new building, or for projects that “prolong the life” of an existing structure, like replacing a roof. The school board could use those funds for qualified construction projects, or could pass a new resolution freeing the funds up.

The school board may discuss spending some of the general-fund reserves in the district’s next budget cycle, in the summer of 2016, Gomez said. The district contracted earlier this year with Synetra Network Services, for an overhaul of the school’s technology and network systems, at a cost of $440,000 over five years. The board might opt to pay off that contract with general-fund monies, to save on interest expenses. But Gomez said he thought a top priority would be projects to improve safety and security at the school.

At the Dec. 17 school board meeting, Mike Schulz, DPS trooper based at Pine Springs, made a presentation on safety and security matters in the school. Schulz’ comments were related in part to the mass shootings at schools and other public buildings that have attracted the nation’s attention in recent years – and to addressing risks of violent incidents of that kind at the Dell City School.

The Dell City School has a “relatively open campus,” Gomez noted, and one emphasis of Schulz’ comments was that, in some regards, Dell City ISD is more at risk than a district in an urban area – because of the school’s remote location and the distance from law enforcement.

Schulz said he plans to organize drills focused on potential hostage situations or shootings at the school. The drills will involve officers from his agency, Hudspeth sheriff’s deputies and law-enforcement rangers from Guadalupe Mountains National Park, he said. The first drill would take place on a weekend, or another time when students were not in session, and would give officers a chance to “get the layout of the building.” Then, the law officers would conduct a live drill with students present.

Gomez noted that the district has a plan for evacuating students from the school in the event of an emergency and transporting them to the Dell City fairgrounds, where they can be met by their parents. But he said it had been some time since the school had conducted a drill. Neither Gomez nor Schulz said when the drill would take place.

A potential policy to allow teachers and staff to carry firearms was also discussed during Schulz’ presentation. Gomez said that extensive planning and review would need to precede the implementation of such a policy.

“It’s something we’d really have to look at – you don’t want everyone to carry,” Gomez said. “There’s a lot of planning and discussions and preparations that would go into it.”

Gomez said that Schulz’ presentation was a reminder that the school’s first and most basic responsibility is the safety and security of its students. And he said there are specific things the district can do to improve security. He said such projects might be a good use of general-fund reserves.

Gomez said an El Paso contractor had recently provided a quote for replacing doors and locks at the school. The district has a received a $3,000 grant from the Texas Association of School Boards for the project, but the contractor estimated the total expense at about $20,000. General fund money might be used for those upgrades.

And Gomez said the district could use reserves to replace its outdated public-announcement and intercom system. The existing system does not allow the superintendent to address classrooms from the administrative offices. Such a system could be a valuable tool in responding to a violent incident or other emergency at the school, he said.