The Maries County R-2 Board of Education on Feb. 22 received confirmation from Gerding, Korte, and Chitwood, PC, CPA that its reconciliation of accounts from July 2018-June 2021 has been completed and shows a positive $341,111.63 revenue adjustment.

“I was pleased,” said Superintendent Dr. Lenice Basham. “We reconciled at $341,111.63 more than expected.”

The board of education hired Gerding, Korte, and Chitwood CPAs at the beginning of 2021 to fix the accounting issue that began under former superintendent Dr. Patrick Call in the 2018 school year.

Since the 2018-19 school year, the district’s contracted CPA Graves and Associates have been unable to reconcile the finances and issued an annual “no opinion.” They recommend the district hire professionals to fix the issue as they didn’t have the availability to proceed.

“It has taken a year to fix and it’s been much more complex than anticipated,” Basham said. “Because of the loss of records from the final year and then switching to the new system. The issues with loss of information and the previous software and then the switch that wasn’t done correctly…they have went through all the checking accounts and looked at what was entered.”

Basham said the CPAS had to go through ledgers and paperwork dated back through the 2018-19 school year. Several factors contributed to the error.

“When we switched the software system for some reason several payrolls were entered more than one time,” Basham reported. “The prior years had expenses reported on the ledger for payroll, benefits and payroll taxes. These were in essence ‘double recorded’ expenses. When they were removed from the books, it increased the cash balances that were available.”

Once the previous years were completed, the revisions were made, but the board didn’t want to stop at the end of the 2020-21 school year.

“They are going to go ahead and do a reconciliation through February 2022,” Basham said at the January meeting.

Now that the reconciliation is completed, Basham said they are happy with the results.

“We were pleased with the outcome,” she said. “There was no indication of criminal action. There was a lack of knowledge and understanding of the basics of school district finances.”

The “found money” will be held in the district’s general fund for day-to-day operations.

Basham said that the additional, unexpected funds increases the district’s reserves to 38.49 percent.