The Fountain Hills Unified School District Governing Board met on April 11 to discuss the 2017 audit summary report and to vote on the issuance of new contracts for administrative staff and teachers.

The board first received updates from Superintendent Patrick Sweeny about happenings in the district and then heard from a Fountain Hills High School student about how planning for the school’s prom was going.

After receiving those two updates Dr. Robert Allen, Assistant Superintendent of Business Operations, presented to the board FHUSD’s 2017 audit summary report.

The report, which is done by the public accounting firm Henry & Horne, looks at financial statements to make sure they are free of material misstatements, prevent fraud and to make sure the district is in compliance with the Uniform System of Financial Records (USFR).

The report showed that FHUSD had no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in either their federal awards or financial statements.

However, the district did have six USFR deficiencies after being evaluated on 200 items. The number of USFR deficiencies has being going down each year since 2014, when the district had 23 deficiencies.

Dr. Allen believes that FHUSD was able to achieve this low number of deficiencies because of great communication with Henry & Horne and said he hopes to keep the number of USFR deficiencies in the single digits for future reports.

Contracts

The governing board also voted to approve the issuance of new contracts for administrative staff and teachers. The new contracts for the 2018-2019 school year see a 2.5 percent pay raise for administrative staff and pay raise for teachers based on the years of experience they have.

Fountain Hills teachers took part in the statewide RedforEd walk-in on April 11 demanding more state funding for public education, but Fountain Hills Education Association President Dr. Paul McElligott said the local demonstrations were in support of other districts in the state.

“As far as FHEA is concerned we are participating to support other districts,” McElligott said. “Fountain Hills has given teachers two substantial raises in the last two-plus years. We are also grateful to a supportive town that passes our bonds every election they are due. We stand in support of other districts who are not as well off.”

The next governing board meeting will be held Wednesday, April 25, at 6:30 p.m. in the Fountain Hills Unified School District Learning Center.