D303 audit shows accounting flaws, no proof of crime

An audit of booster club funds at St. Charles East High School revealed some poor accounting procedures but no proof of stolen money, district officials said Wednesday.

St. Charles Police announced at the same time it’s closed an accompanying criminal investigation of the handling of the funds.

“Everyone that we’ve talked to involved in this has received their money back,” police spokesman Paul McCurtain said.

The outside audit and St. Charles School District 303’s official written response references to situations were money was returned.

The first involves money given to coaches through the football program’s booster club accounts. The district had its chief financial officer look at the payments and the accounts. The result was a determination that the payments, in amounts not made public, have all been returned by the coaches.

The second situation involves the district’s contact with a company called Slam Dunk to bring a new scoreboard to the football field.

The sponsor contract assignment agreement gave the high school 70 percent of all sponsor revenue collected. The rest of the money went to Slam Dunk. The company raised nearly $39,000 of the $140,000 needed to buy the scoreboard. As a result of the shortfall, the scoreboard was never built and the money had to be returned to the four organizations that donated it. Superintendent Don Schlomann said the school still needs a new scoreboard.

“While it might have been a good idea in a different economy, I think we might need to scale back our expectations,” he said.

While the audit revealed no crime, it did show holes in the accounting of the booster funds.

There is only one unsupervised person overseeing all the deposits and expenditures from the funds. The district will now ensure all booster funds transactions also go through the district’s business office and are tied to specific projects.

Second, a computer crash wiped out many of the electronic records of the booster funds. The audit used paper documents supporting the transactions in the funds, but two deposits and three expenditures from the fund lacked any supporting documentation at all. The amounts of those transactions were not disclosed in the report.

There were also duplicate accounting entries and mixed-up receipts noted in the audit. As a result, the district has created a new electronic backup of the data to protect against the future loss of information.

Schlomann said the results of the audit mean the accusations of missing money can be put to rest and the reputations of east high school athletic coaches and Athletic Director Jerry Krieg have been restored.

“Mr. Krieg can now retire with his head held high,” Schlomann said.