{"id":29423,"date":"2024-02-02T00:53:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-02T07:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-district-audit-to-analyze-money-systems-for-extracurricular-activities\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:56:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:56:03","slug":"montezuma-cortez-school-district-audit-to-analyze-money-systems-for-extracurricular-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-cortez-school-district-audit-to-analyze-money-systems-for-extracurricular-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma-Cortez school district audit to analyze money systems for extracurricular activities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sam
Sam Green\/The Journal<br><br>The Montezuma-Cortez School District budget is expected to rise next school year, but district officials say it still won\u2019t be enough to address staff salaries, transportation and other district needs.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The Montezuma-Cortez School District RE-1 recently audited its extracurricular activities, according to Superintendent Tom Burris.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re making sure we\u2019re doing everything both legally and financially correct,\u201d Burris told The Journal <\/em>on Friday. He said the audit was looking at the district\u2019s 740 account, which correlates to activity money.<\/p>\n

\"Superintendent
Superintendent Tom Burris<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Attorney
Attorney Brad Miller<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The district\u2019s attorney, Brad Miller of Miller Farmer Law, on Tuesday told The Journal<\/em> that with the multiple transitions of the chief financial role in the district, there haven\u2019t been any recent policy updates.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt basically has to do with updating and sort of structuring the district\u2019s financial policies when it comes to various sorts of revenues,\u201d Miller said of the audit. \u201cAn exploration of which policies exist and what financial funds are being utilized and how they\u2019re being utilized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller said the audit will help create updated policies to strengthen systems that manage gate fees at events, extracurricular trips, travel and more.<\/p>\n

Burris also mentioned the policies currently in place, saying, \u201cWe have policies, but they are very weak policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re putting together systems to manage this so that we\u2019re being responsible to the public by taking care of our money correctly,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t the point of the audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that is completely inaccurate,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThis has nothing to do with changing any programs. There\u2019s nobody targeted, and there\u2019s no department targeted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burris also responded to questions about whether any activities or staff were at risk in the audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just looking at our policies and procedures and making sure we have everything covered,\u201d Burris said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t specific to anybody, theater, ag, football, basketball \u2026 all athletics use the 740 account.\u201d<\/p>\n

While they didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to make sure we\u2019re more systematic about our policies and processes,\u201d he finished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

was run to see which policies and procedures require updating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,28,60,216,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80745,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29423\/revisions\/80745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29423"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}