PRIEST RIVER — The West Bonner County School District board of trustees expressed confidence in the district’s ability to catch up on its state required audits at its Dec. 17 meeting.

The district’s fiscal year 2024 audit will be handled by Hayden Ross, a Moscow-based firm which also handles the audits for the Lake Pend Oreille School District. WBCSD Superintendent Kim Spacek said representatives from the firm came out to district headquarters Dec. 18 to collect data and expressed confidence in the firm. 

“I really foresee this, because of the new staff, once we get this one done, and of course, move into the 2025 audit, we should really have a cadence there,” Spacek said. “We need to get this going so that we can meet our timelines.” 

Trustee Paul Turco said he and board chair Ann Yount attended a meeting with Spacek and a representative from Hayden Ross on Dec. 1. Turco said he was confident in the group’s ability to keep the district on their timeline. 

“Ann and I were in that meeting with them, and it definitely feels a lot more confident moving forward with this group,” Turco said. “They have a good game plan, so I'm confident that sticking to the timeline is only going to help them produce the audits in a timely manner.” 

Previously, CliftonLarsonAllen LLP was hired to perform the district’s fiscal year 2023 audit which was 22 months behind and caused the state to withhold $177,482 from the district. The trustees and Spacek expressed frustration with CLA earlier in the year for the delay in delivering the 2023 audit. 

The 2024 audit is now 13 months overdue to the state, which has held up movement on its fiscal year 2025 audit. 

Due to the overdue nature of the 2023 and 2024 audit, the district saw its federal grant reimbursements frozen Sept. 12. In a letter sent from Idaho’s Deputy Superintendent Spencer Barzee, he said the district would not be approved for any fiscal year 2026 grants until the district received the 2023 and 2024 audits. 

"While this evidence of corrective action allowed IDE to conditionally approve federal grant applications and maintain funding for ESEA and IDEA programs, the district has now failed to meet the corrective timelines for two consecutive years,” Barzee wrote.  

Spacek said in September that the audits were a priority for the district, after it had fallen significantly behind on completing them. The district’s 2023 audit was approved by the board in October. 

“We are all working together to, yes, get the back audits done,” Spacek said in September. “But long-term the idea is that no matter what’s going on at the district, we’ve got to get this stuff done for our students and community.”