It’ll still be a week or two before the Northridge School District’s audit is released to the public, but treasurer Jim Hudson told finance committee members Dec. 13 that the district’s audit is excellent.

“The actual report was not shared with the committee because it has not been released,” and won’t be for another week or two, Hudson said. But he and committee members went through the three parts of an audit — the audit itself, the management letter, and comments from the state.

“Overall we had an unqualified result, which is the best rating an entity can get,” he said. “There were no citations or findings for recovery.”

Hudson said the district had two management letter comments and a few verbal comments that will be addressed.

“The auditors issue these as areas of improvement or ways to further increase internal controls,” he said. “They make the recommendations based on best practices and or auditing standards.”

Hudson said committee members discussed several other topics that will be brought up at the regular school board meeting Dec. 19.

He said the district’s current bus contract will expire at the end of this fiscal year, and the finance committee will report to the board on the options available. There are three: Continue the contract with Petermann, which has provided busing for the district since 2009, consider proposals from other providers, or cost out the option of providing busing to students in-house.

“At this point each committee member will be getting information based on some potential ideas we had (at the finance meeting),” Hudson said, and they’ll share that information Monday night.

He said members of the facilities subcommittee gave an update regarding the main campus modular building that houses intermediate students. All agreed that closing down the modular classrooms — the lease ends in July — and distributing the students throughout other district buildings may make best economic sense. But they don’t think it’s the best option for students. (See related story this page.)

“They did a great job linking the educational goals of the district to current and future facility needs,” he said.

Superintendent John Shepard said the subcommittee will present its findings Dec. 19.

Board member Jayma Bammerlin said previously that facilities subcommittee also had several options to consider. The first option is replacing the existing rented modular classrooms with new, similar, and permanent structures, which would cost roughly $2.5 million. The second is purchasing the existing modular space outright, which would cost roughly $560,000.

The facilities subcommittee presented its findings to the full finance committee Dec. 15.

Hudson said a representative from the Solar Planet company will attend the Dec. 19 board meeting to continue discussions about providing solar energy to some of the district’s buildings. The solar panels could represent a 60-percent savings in energy costs to the district.

“Currently, Centerburg is working with this company and is 50 percent done with the project,” Hudson said.