Superintendent Hollis Merrell shared at the governing board meeting for the Snowflake Unified School District (SUSD) on Oct. 11 that all the schools within the district received an “A” score from the Arizona State Board of Education for the 2017-18 school year.
“We are pretty excited about the scores,” said Merrell. “It is a tremendous accomplishment to have all your schools be ‘A’ schools. So congratulations to our schools, staff and students. It’s wonderful and even better to see our people still working to get better.”
Merrell also noted that the financial audit was completed this week, as he said, “A big thank you to Mark Ollerton and his staff for helping with the audit. The auditors usually find something here and there that slip through the cracks, but they have to work pretty hard to find the errors. It’s a lot of work, but it is a good thing to have good audits and know that we are using the tax money appropriately.”
Ollerton, the business manager for SUSD, reviewed the 2018 financial report for the board. “In 2018 a lot of good things took place and we made some strategic financial decisions. The summary of that will be advertised on the school website,” said Ollerton.
For 2018, the total budget was $13.8 million. Of that amount the district spent $11.9 million leaving a carryover of $1.9 million. Ollerton noted that large carryover was due to prepaying the insurance premiums, which at one time saved the district money. “It was a legal and good practice,” said Ollerton. “The district currently has no prepays. We drew down the prepays which created a budget carry over.”
Ollerton continued, “This year, we are trying to address what we are doing with the carry over. I think you have to make an educated decision as to what is best and appropriate in a cushion and we are spending the carry over down. The only scary thing is this is soft money and we don’t want to link it into fixed costs.”
The board unanimously approved the 2018 annual financial report.
In other business, the board:
* Approved the out-of-state travel for the Snowflake High School (SHS) boys basketball team to attend a tournament in Aztec, N.M. The travel time is estimated to be four hours 15 minutes and during Christmas break so there will be no loss of school time.
* Approved the August financials for a total of $1 million, with payroll of $863,991 and accounts payable of $166,013.
* Approved the hiring of Alicia Shugart, Snowflake High Scholl health tech and Dale Hansen, Snowflake Junior High girls basketball coach.
* Approved the Arizona School Board Association policy advisories.
