Ever Wonder What the APS Audit Committee Does?

Probably not. I concede that you have probably never wondered what the APS Audit Committee does. But I’m going to tell you anyway, because they met last night, and I hauled myself over to the Alice and Bruce King Educational Complex to observe the meeting and take notes. I didn’t write about it for the morning paper, but I’m going to share it with you here so my efforts won’t be for naught.

As an aside, you know what I did write about in the morning paper? Professional learning communities. I think it’s pretty interesting and you should check it out.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened at the audit committee was an exchange between board members Kathy Korte and Martin Esquivel about charter school audits, and how closely APS should be monitoring the finances of the charters it authorizes. Korte said APS should perhaps audit its charter schools more often. But Esquivel said his understanding of state law is that charters are responsible for their finances, and APS should not receive qualified audits if there are problems with its charters. Korte then said the district is “stuck between a rock and a hard place, where we authorize charters, they can do whatever they want and they come back to us with problems, instead of catching it as it goes.”

This issue has come up at APS before. In fact, the issues outlined in this story from early 2010 are essentially still simmering. Every year, APS asks the state Legislature to revise and clarify the statutes on charter finances, but so far they have not. And so relations between APS and charter schools remain tense, although certain charters have good relations with the district, and are working together to get all charters in public buildings by 2015, per state law. In fact, the district broke ground last week on a facility for Montessori of the Rio Grande charter.

The audit committee is different from all the other APS committees, which are made up of the seven members of the school board. That, by the way, is good for readers to understand. All the APS committees are committees of the whole. So when I write a story that says the policy committee voted to approve something, but it still must be approved by the full board, that full board approval is mostly a formality, since everyone on the school board also sits on the committee.

That’s true of all committees except the audit committee, which includes the entire school board, as well as the superintendent, chief financial officer, chief operating officer, district internal auditor and two members from the community. That might not be a complete list, but it’s close.