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School District Finance Director Anticipates Audit Being Finished on Time

Daniel Prince

Summer reading camp at Buffalo receives perfect evaluation from the state

At Monday’s meeting of the Union County Board of School Trustees, Superintendent Joey Haney said the summer camps have been a success, and he thanked everyone who took part in them. He noted that the Jacket Training Camp for rising 9th graders had begun earlier that day with around 16 participants. He said he hoped even more would attend later in the week. Haney said the SC Department of Education visited and evaluated the reading camp at Buffalo Elementary, and he said the district received a perfect score on the evaluation and an invitation to present about the camp during the upcoming Leaders Making Readers Literacy Conference.

He noted that new employee orientation was scheduled for the following day to allow the new employees of the district a chance to meet and network and get signed up for benefits. The district’s annual administrative retreat with principals, assistant principals, and directors would be held Wednesday and Thursday at Sunset Farms. He noted the first official day back for teachers would be Monday, August 8, while acknowledging that many teachers have already been coming in and getting their classrooms ready and working on lessons for the coming year. The district’s opening session will be held on Tuesday, August 9, at the Union County High School gym. The first day of school for students is set for Monday, August 15.

UCHS Principal Kevin Farmer presented information to the board about marching band as a PE credit. The SC Department of Education requires a board vote each year on a waiver allowing marching band to count as a physical education credit for graduation purposes. The board unanimously approved the waiver.

Finance Director Kelly Richardson said that the district is still a month or so away from being able to close out the fiscal year. She said the district will continue to receive invoices for June over the next couple of weeks, so the final numbers will change. She said there is a current net operating gain of $2.9 million. She said preliminary work on the upcoming audit began in June, and the auditors will be back in at the end of September. Richardson said she hopes the audit will be ready to present by the November board meeting. The district has been late for the last couple of years in getting the audit ready, and that has led to some increased scrutiny by the South Carolina Department of Education. The auditors noted several findings in last year’s audit of areas of concern, though the audit overall received a clean opinion. One reason Richardson was hired as finance director was to help clean up some of those areas of concern and to get the audit done on time and filed with the SC Department of Education by the deadline.

Jeff Stribble presented the personnel report, which the board approved. The meeting then adjourned. We’ll have more from the meeting coming up in tomorrow’s newscast.

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