Why should a school district care about CPA licensure?
August 4, 2023 | Guest Author
I recently heard a presentation from the Minnesota State Demographer’s Office stating there are currently two jobs available for every eligible worker in the state.
What an eye-opener.
Working in public education, I am acutely aware of how difficult it is to hire quality staff, but I never took a step back to think about what this means in other sectors throughout Minnesota.
It is easy to prioritize public health, public education and other necessary services, but have you ever stopped to consider the impressive scope of services certified public accountants provide? As a recovering CPA myself, I have a unique perspective as a prior auditor and current auditee.
Schools are required by law to submit their final expenditures to the Minnesota Department of Education by Nov. 30 each year and their final audit report by Dec. 31. In case you don’t want to do the math, that’s about 105 workdays from year-end on June 30 for 24 CPA firms to audit 520 public schools, charter schools, education districts and cooperatives! On the bright side (or not), those 105 days fall during Minnesota’s best months for decent weather!
In addition to a schedule crunch, schools went through the pandemic with a record amount of federal support that required additional audit procedures. GASB (Government Accounting Standards Board) has been publishing an astounding number of new standards that are substantially changing how we report financial information.
These require the expertise of a CPA to ensure districts are compliant. It is an invaluable partnership.
In the Northfield School District, our last audit was delayed due to an unexpected staffing shortage, and then further delayed because of a blizzard. We ended up having a special board meeting to approve our audit — only three days prior to the deadline. The year prior, we had to issue our financial statements separately from our single audit because the federal government hadn’t released the official guidance for auditing federal COVID-related funding.
Understanding school finance is not for the faint of heart; providing continuity of staff is critical to the quality of our audit.
We spend so much time as a district trying to reduce barriers for students in any and every way possible because it’s what must be done. To support that, the Minnesota Legislature approved eliminating the Minnesota Teacher Licensure Examinations (MTLE) to reduce a barrier for teacher licensure. The decline in the workforce is not a post-COVID fluke and waiting to see if it gets better is not a solution for any industry.
Now is the time to offer additional pathways for obtaining CPA licensure before we put schools at risk of being noncompliant with state law because there simply aren’t enough CPAs to do the statutorily required work.
Val Mertesdorf is the director of finance for Northfield Public Schools.
Learn more about this CPA pathways initiative
Do you want to learn more about this effort? You can keep up with the evolving conversation by visiting the MNCPA’s webpage about the broadening pathways to CPA licensure initiative.
Visit CPA Pathways page
Topics: Legislative & Government Affairs, Regulation, Staffing, Professional Certification, Succession, Government, Education
Guest Author
The MNCPA occasionally requests people in or connected to the accounting profession to provide their insights for MNCPA Perspectives.
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