The Shawano School District’s 2025 financial audit came back with a glowing review, it was revealed during a Jan. 12 meeting of the district’s operations committee.
Leah Lasecki with Clifton Larson Allen, an auditing firm based in Green Bay, told the committee that no material adjustments needed to be made, and there was only one deficiency in controls, which meant that the school district is doing well in maintaining information on where its money goes.
“I have been auditing the Shawano School District for, I think this is the sixth year,” Lasecki said. “At some points, it’s been a little bit of a rocky road. I’ve worked with four finance directors since I started working with Shawano, and so I am very happy to say that this last year … it went much, much better than what it has in the past.”
Having the same people working in the finance office has helped to give the school district its excellent audit, according to Lasecki. There has been an excellent cleanup of past errors, she said.
Lasecki said there was a little challenge in going through the district’s federal funding due to the government shutdown that lasted for nearly two months in October and November 2025, making up about 40% of the time Clifton Larson Allen spent doing the Shawano audit.
“The federal shutdown caused a lot of problems for auditors,” Lasecki said.
Getting a clean audit opinion is the best that any government agency can hope for, according to Lasecki.
“That means we don’t believe your financial statements are materially misstated,” she said. “That is the best opinion an auditor can give you.”
An issue that has cleared up in the financial audit includes the segregation of duties, which means making sure the financial responsibilities are not just in the hands of one or two people.
“There’s a lot stronger environment than what you had in the past,” Lasecki said.
The only deficiency found was that the district did not prepare its own annual financial report, which was instead prepared by Clifton Larson Allen. Lasecki said that has actually become very common for her clients to do.
“It’s very common to have your auditors do your financial statements,” she said. “However, in order to be in accordance with internal control requirements, the district should really be preparing their own financial statements, but it’s expensive to do that. You have to have somebody trained to do that and keeps up with the standards, so the district made the decision years and years ago to outsource that to CLA.”
Lasecki added that she has school districts that are larger than Shawano that have her firm prepare their financial reports, so it has become common practice, even if it’s not looked upon as appropriate.
For the federal funding, CLA audited child nutrition and special education funding. Lasecki noted that the district gets more than $2 million in federal funds annually, which means it’s not possible to audit all of the funds, so the firm had to select a few to check.
“Every two or three years, we’re auditing those federal programs,” she said.
There were no findings on the state funding the district receives, according to Lasecki.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
