The Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 recently audited its extracurricular activities, according to Superintendent Tom Burris.
“We’re making sure we’re doing everything both legally and financially correct,” Burris told The Journal on Friday. He said the audit was looking at the district’s 740 account, which correlates to activity money.
The district’s attorney, Brad Miller of Miller Farmer Law, on Tuesday told The Journal that with the multiple transitions of the chief financial role in the district, there haven’t been any recent policy updates.
Longtime finance director Kyle Archibeque attended his last board meeting as finance director in March of 2023, as he was transitioning to another job. Jim Grierson came on in April, but only attended one meeting before resigning.
Danielle Brafford came on as the finance director next, attending her first board meeting on August 10, 2023. She is the current finance director for the district.
“It basically has to do with updating and sort of structuring the district’s financial policies when it comes to various sorts of revenues,” Miller said of the audit. “An exploration of which policies exist and what financial funds are being utilized and how they’re being utilized.”
Miller said the audit will help create updated policies to strengthen systems that manage gate fees at events, extracurricular trips, travel and more.
Burris also mentioned the policies currently in place, saying, “We have policies, but they are very weak policies.”
An example Burris provided is making sure money collected at football games for tickets are properly accounted for, and Miller said that receipts all need to be going to the right places to be taken into account and properly filed.
“We’re putting together systems to manage this so that we’re being responsible to the public by taking care of our money correctly,” Miller said.
Some parents whose parents attend school in the district expressed their concerns over the audit, fearing that certain programs, activities or faculty could be at risk of being cut or losing funding, but both Burris and Miller emphasized that this wasn’t the point of the audit.
“I think that is completely inaccurate,” Miller said. “This has nothing to do with changing any programs. There’s nobody targeted, and there’s no department targeted.”
Burris also responded to questions about whether any activities or staff were at risk in the audit.
“We’re just looking at our policies and procedures and making sure we have everything covered,” Burris said. “This isn’t specific to anybody, theater, ag, football, basketball ... all athletics use the 740 account.”
While they didn’t go into detail about the exact processes being utilized as they explore the finances of each activities program, Miller reiterated that the audit is about establishing checks and balances and working on how the district handles receipts, grants, funds and more.
“We just need to make sure we’re more systematic about our policies and processes,” he finished.
