Neelyville R-IV gets clean audit

NEELYVILLE — The Neelyville R-IV audit report said the district is in good financial shape.

The school board reviewed the audit presented by Dwayne Clark, CPA, in November and voted to approve it during the December monthly meeting.

At the end of the 2018-19 fiscal year, the district had more money in each of it’s primary accounts than in the year prior, according to board documents.

The general fund, which is used for day-to-day operations and bills, ended the fiscal year at $1,730,319, which is almost $60,000 above where it ended the year prior.

The capital project fund, which is used for building operations and pupil transportation, saw the largest increase with nearly $70,000. The fund ended at $177,883.81, according to board documents.

Overall, the district received $6,342,406.14 in local, county, state and federal funding. The two largest sources were state and local respectively. The district ended the fiscal year with a balance of $1,908,210.80, which is an increase of $129,649.57.

Building projects

The new high school office is nearing completion.

Superintendent Debra Parish said there are some outside items that still need to be addressed, particularly on the porch.

The district is also planning to install fencing along the building in order to keep the campus completely enclosed. Parish said, she believes there’s enough left over fencing from when it was originally installed to cover most of what needs fenced, but some may need to be purchased to cover the east side.

The building itself will include offices for the high school principal, counselor, curriculum director, technology director and the alternative school.

When entering the building, visitors will need to be let in by administration. They would also need to be let into a second door, if going to visit the principal/counselor or one of the offices in the back of the building.

Administration plans to move into the new building over winter break.

Progress is also being made on the maintenance building, which will be on the Neelyville campus. The building will be used mostly for storage and as a space to work on the equipment as needed.

Parish said the poles for the building are up and progress is being made.

Ballfield lights

The lighting at the ballfield was recently inspected because several have bulbs that need replaced.

Parish said the Neelyville municipal city light and water truck came over the summer to change some of the bulbs.

“They couldn’t change any lights because they said the wiring was so old and corroded that they couldn’t change anything,” she said. “We’re going to have to look at doing something.”

She asked the board to consider the issue over the next month to come up with potential solutions.

Board members suggested having the lumber looked at for rot in order to provide better information about what work needs to be done.

In response, Parish said she’d ask people with the Ozark Border Electric Cooperative to come and look at the lights.

“Maybe give us a little more input about what we need to do,” she said.