EXETER \u2014 The results of the audit of the 2024-25 school year was presented to the Wyoming Area Board of Education on Tuesday. Prepared by the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP, the audit found no unusual transactions, no uncorrected misstatements, and no \u201cother difficulties\u201d with the district\u2019s accounting practices. It also determined that Wyoming Area\u2019s actual expenditures and revenues resulted in much less of a fund balance drain than the school board had anticipated in its budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an unmodified opinion on your financial statements, we have an unmodified opinion on compliance,\u201d Carl Hogan, a principal for CLA in King of Prussia, who delivered a presentation on the Wyoming Area audit Tuesday. \u201cBasically meaning, this is a clean audit report.\u201d<\/p>\n
The audit found Wyoming Area collected $48.59 million in revenue during the 2024-25 school year, amounting to $2.05 million, or 4.41%, more than budgeted revenue. Differences between the budgeted and actual revenue can be attributed to the district collecting $860,180 in additional local revenue, which includes revenue from property taxes and other taxes and fees the school board imposes, over what had been budgeted; $1.58 million in additional state revenue; and $391,280 less in federal revenue.<\/p>\n
The seven-figure gap between budgeted and actual state revenue is the result of impunctuality of the state budgeting process. The General Assembly has habitually passes the state budget, which determines school districts\u2019 state funding, after the school boards are required to adopt their budgets under state law.<\/p>\n
State funding for Wyoming Area is set to come in over budget again this year. Tom Melone, whose firm performs business-management services for Wyoming Area, said Tuesday that the state budget the General Assembly adopted earlier this month includes around $490,000 in additional funding for Wyoming Area than the school board had included in its budget. Gov. Josh Shapiro had proposed sending Wyoming Area a similar sum of additional funding in the proposed budget he introduced over the winter, but Wyoming Area excluded the funding to stay conservative in its revenue estimates.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the line items, such as taxes and investment earnings came in better than anticipated, but keep that budget practice of being conservative,\u201d Hogan said during his audit presentation. \u201cIt\u2019s better to be a little bit over than a little bit under in this line item.\u201d<\/p>\n
Expenses, however, were found to be similarly underestimated. Wyoming Area\u2019s actual expenditures for the 2024-25 school year were $48.57 million, a sum that is $897,191, or 1.88%, greater than budgeted expenditures. Hogan attributed these excess expenses to the tuition Wyoming Area needed to pay charter schools and the growing cost of special education \u2013 two cost pressures school districts across the Wyoming Valley and throughout the commonwealth have bemoaned as being increasingly unmanageable.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of that has to do with those costs and the unpredictability of those costs,\u201d Hogan said.<\/p>\n
The audit also reviewed the Wyoming Area food-service budget, finding it collected $14,091 in operating revenue and earnings on investment. The vast majority of food-service funding at Wyoming Area came from federal food-service funding, totaling $918,804; and state food-service funding, totaling $163,900. (Wyoming Area qualifies under the Community Eligibility Provision under the National School Lunch program, with the provision allowing every Wyoming Area student to qualify for a free lunch. Pennsylvania currently has universal free school breakfast.) The state and federal funding was nevertheless short of the district\u2019s food-service losses, requiring $102,088 transfer from the general fund.<\/p>\n
All these expense and revenue figures meant Wyoming Area finished the 2024-25 school year with revenues $17,562 in excess over expenses, giving them an operating surplus rather than a $1.14 million deficit. Because of other outbound transfers, namely the $102,088 transfer to subsidize food service, the Wyoming Area fund balance still finished the year depleted $84,526 \u2014 still marking an improvement over the $1.25 million depletion that had been budgeted. With the actual change being less than $85,000, the Wyoming Area fund balance finished the 2024-25 school year around $4.2 million, close to where the district\u2019s fund-balance level has been since the 2022-23 school year.<\/p>\n
Wyoming Area also drew on net $641,584 from its capital fund, ending the 2024-25 school year with $681,107 for future capital projects. Between capital and operational categories, the district\u2019s total fund balance is $4.92 million, including $3.11 million in unassigned funds.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically, what we\u2019re seeing here is that as the fund balance goes up, you\u2019re using that fund balance as needed without it putting it too low,\u201d Hogan said.<\/p>\n
Melone said the district received the results of the audit in June and it has already been placed on file with the relevant state authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe audit came back stating all of our procedures are in compliance,\u201d Wyoming Area Superintendent Jon Pollard said after the school board meeting Tuesday. \u201cIt came back clean\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXETER \u2014 The results of the audit of the 2024-25 school year was presented to the Wyoming Area…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[227,1027,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,802],"class_list":["post-254927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-education","tag-exeter","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}