Alan Grimsley of the accounting firm of Derrick Stubbs & Stith presents his report on the Lexington Richland District 5 2010-11 fiscal year audit.
The district finished the year ended June 30 with a balance of $49,816,000, with a general fund balance of $24,646,085, according to Grimsley.
The Nerve 
The external auditor provided a ‘clean bill of health’ according to general accounting principles. Board chairman Gantt used this as a reason to state at a recent board meeting that requests from concerned citizens for information concerning purchases made by teachers and administrators and charged to a school credit card were uncalled for.
The auditor’s report as published on the district website contains a standard boiler plate statement to the effect “Accordingly, we do not express an opinion on the effectiveness of the School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties’ internal control over financial reporting”. This statement appears in all reports by external auditors and appeared in District One reports for the past five yeas – although it came to light that a coach at D1 WhiteKnoll was pocketing several thousand dollars.
There is no evidence that similar embezzlement events are occurring at District Five, but it seems prudent to examine credit card purchases as a means to give assurance that no one is lining his/her pockets at taxpayer expense. This begs the question why the administration and the board is so adamant in their refusal to allow interested citizens to trace reporting of a representative sample of these transactions.
As far as I can tell no one has refused to provide information via FOI. Per the district they did refuse a request to allow a person to sit down with a district computer and rifle through the district’s accounting system. You can have all the information you want via FOI.
You neglect to mention that Dr. Fulmer gave a full accounting of the charges that were questioned in a local paper. Every one of the charges was justified.
This is nothing more than a anti-school and anti-tax group wrapping themselves in a fiscal responsibility cloak.