MH Catholic Board of Education given clean financial audit

The Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education held a public board meeting Nov. 27 to review and approve annual audit findings, audit report and the draft-audited financial statements as of Aug. 31, 2023.

Delayne Sackman, partner at MNP LLP Chartered Professional Accountants, told the board they were prepared to issue the final report and the audit was clean.

“We feel your statements fairly reflect your financial positions and your full financial operations in a year,” stated Sackman. She added the audit is based on the numbers as well as full disclosure, with all 500-plus pages of statements and statement notes examined to ensure MHCBE accounting policies are fair, conservative and consistent.

“It takes a lot of work to get there, but we got there and management was very cooperative, they didn’t put any limitations on our requests,” said Sackman.

All the adjusted journal entries were provided by management with no errors found or incidences of noncompliance with laws. The biggest difference from prior years was the new handbook on asset retirement obligations, which required considerable work.

Amanda McCrie, assistant secretary treasurer at MHCBE, provided highlights of the audited financial statements to the board.

The spring budget projected enrolment of 2,618.5 FTE (full-time equivalent students) whereas actual enrolment for the fall budget update was higher by 22.5 FTE. MHCBE received additional grants after the approval of the spring budget, which included $244,710 for teacher salary settlement, $201,328 of available mental health in schools grant, a supplemental enrolment grant of $165,000, along with 10 other grants.

MHCBE invested $919,700 in building and site improvements across the division as well as purchasing $417,500 in equipment. A total of 85.2% of revenue comes from Alberta

Education, which includes property tax revenue, and was up 6.3% from 2022, an increase of $1,853,100.

Expenses were projected to be $37,260,500 at the thirdquarter financial update, but actual expenses were lower by $648,120 for a total of $36,612,400. This is due to instruction, operations and maintenance, transportation and administration expenses all being lower than projected.

The link to the full reports can be found under the agenda for the Nov. 27 public meeting at https://www. mhcbe.ab.ca/board/meetings-agendas, and the meeting can be viewed under the livestream tab on the MHCBE YouTube channel.