Moses Lake discovers enrollment error

School might have to repay $90,000

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake School District might have to repay $90,000 to the state after an error in enrollment numbers was discovered.

The error is included as part of a list of exit items included in a yearly audit from the Washington State Auditor's Office.

"We found that the district over reported basic enrollment of students attending the Skills Center by approximately 19.55 (full-time students), resulting in an apportionment overpayment of approximately $90,000," the report states.

District Superintendent of Business and Operations Monte Redal said the district discovered the error before the auditor did, so it was not included as a finding or as a management letter.

"We fixed that, and we announced it to the board when we did fix it," Redal said.

He said in his nine years at the district, the district has never received a finding.

A miscommunication between the person reporting Skills Center numbers and the person reporting regular enrollment numbers resulted in extra students being counted, he said.

Skills center students are counted as a 0.6 full-time equivalent to a full time student, and typically regular students attending part-time are counted as 0.5 full-time equivalent.

"It was just an oversight that one department wasn't talking to the other department," he said.

If the state superintendent's office decides the district must repay the funds, the district would likely repay it during the 2007 to 2008 school year, Redal said.

"We were fortunate that we caught this beforehand," he said.

Repaying the funds would not put the district into financial hardship, Redal said.

Two other exit items were included in the report, but were not included in the findings or as a management letter.

One found teachers at the high school were inconsistently taking attendance.

"I think we are consistently taking attendance but we couldn't prove we were," Redal said.

He said there were small inconsistencies in how attendance is taken.

"We're cleaning that up, too," he said.

The final exit item found district employees ran fund-raisers involving student athletes and gave the funds to a booster club. The money is required to go to the Associated Student Body, the report states.

The auditor is telling them to put the money back into the hands of students, Redal said. The money is probably going to be applied the same way it was applied before, but through the Associated Student Body instead of the booster club, he said.

"These are just only exit items," Redal said. "It's a very clean audit."