The Washington Court House City School (WCHCS) District was presented with the Auditor of State Award and the Stars Rating System (StaRS) Award of Highest Achievement during its monthly board of education meeting on Monday evening.
Joe Braden — West Regional liaison for Keith Faber, Ohio Auditor of State — visited the meeting to present the awards to WCHCS Treasurer Becky Mullins. The Auditor of State Award — according to Braden — is presented to local governments and school districts upon the completion of a financial audit that meets specific criteria of a “clean” audit report.
This includes filing the report by the due date in accordance with the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP); the report not containing any findings for recovery, material citations, material weaknesses, significant deficiencies, uniform guidance findings or questioned costs; and the management letter containing no comments related to ethics referrals, questioned costs less than the threshold, lack of timely, public meetings or public records issues, bank reconciliation issues, and the entity has no other financial or other concerns.
According to Braden, the Auditor of State’s office audits nearly 6,000 entities and fewer than 8 percent of all entities that are audited are even eligible for this award.
“This award represents the hard work of all the school employees who strive each day to achieve accounting excellence,” Braden said. “Also I want to recognize the board of education members and the superintendent that have done an excellent job accounting for every dollar in the school district’s offices and departments. I especially want to recognize Becky Mullins for her outstanding leadership, professionalism and commitment to fiscal integrity.”
Additionally, Braden presented the district with the StaRS Highest Achievement Award of four stars. In order to receive four stars, the district must achieve six best practices for open and transparent government. These best practices include employing a method to track public records requests; provides an acknowledgement to the requester when a public records request is received; the staff has been trained on how to route public records requests to the record custodian; all elected officials or their designees have taken the required public records training with the applicable time frame; the public office has an online presence that provides the office’s agendas, policies and schedules; and finally the office has an online presence that provides access to official documents such as the annual budget, salaries and contact information.
Also during the meeting were a number of personnel-related items including the resignations of four, the employment of six individuals and more. Finally, Mullins recommended and the board approved $3,942.28 to Community Action Commission of Fayette County for salary/leave accrual and fringe benefits for literacy grant.
Reach Martin Graham at (740) 463-9684 or on Twitter @MartiTheNewsGuy.
