At their December board meeting on Monday, the Southwest Open School board heard about their recent audit, celebrated attendance and made plans for board training in the new year.

The board was updated on grants to be used for career pathway development, and SWOS plans to continue looking for ways to improve education.

Chris Majors of the Cortez accounting firm Majors and Haley P.C., provided information about the school’s audit, which was completed June 30.

In the revenue section of the 52-page audit, Majors showed that the school’s revenue had fallen $213,603 – from $2,268,513 the previous school year to the current $2,054,910.

The audit also showed that SWOS incurred $1,968,878 in expenses, up $425,547 from a total of $1,543,331 in expenses the prior year.

Because of the rise in expenses, the general fund is down 15.8%.

After the audit, SWOS Director Casey Simpson shared news on the school’s attendance rate, currently at 87.6%. That is more than 2 percentage points below the Montezuma-Cortez attendance rate, which ranges from 89.7% to about 90% across their schools.

Those who haven’t been counted in SWOS’ number of absent students have a “verifiable excuse,” according to Simpson.

Before moving onto information about the school’s upcoming board training, Simpson updated the board on two grants that the school had recently applied for, one of which that will help them maintain their academic interventionist.

Before breaking for executive session to perform the director self-evaluation, the board discussed board training scheduled for Feb. 13.

The board school plans to hold the training at the Cortez Chamber of Commerce. The session is expected to last two to four hours, depending on the depth of the discussions about the school and board member growth.

Potential topics of discussion include recruitment, allowing the board to be mentors, student interns, time commitments to the board and its duties.

Simpson also emphasized the school’s goal of what he called “educational journey mapping,” which helps match students with a pathway that matches the student’s story and helps them realize their hopes and dreams, something that Simpson said could also be discussed further at the board training.

The board then headed to executive session for the director self-evaluation.

The board will meet again in January.