ENCINITAS — The San Dieguito Union High School District approved a contract with firm CWDL to complete an audit of the district’s four high school foundations following recent questions about financial mismanagement surrounding the Canyon Crest Academy Foundation.
The school district board unanimously approved the $65,000 contract at its Nov. 14 board meeting after agreeing to commence an audit in September and issuing a request for proposals last month. CWDL will audit the school foundations at Canyon Crest Academy, Torrey Pines, La Costa Canyon and San Dieguito Academy high schools.
Calls for an audit were spurred by a scathing online report published by two Canyon Crest Academy seniors in September, which alleged financial mismanagement within the Canyon Crest Academy Foundation. The nonprofit is run largely by parent volunteers and supports the high school’s athletics, arts and STEM programming.
In the “Ravens for Transparency” report, students questioned the foundation’s unclear itemization of around $674,000 worth of expenditures in 2023 and the foundation’s practice of taking end-of-year fees from individual clubs, among other concerns.
District management said the school foundations are important sources of revenue for high schools, and the audit is intended to promote transparency.
“At this point, this is an investment to regain the trust and the transparency in our foundations so that this support can continue,” said Stephen Dickinson, Associate Superintendent of Business Services.
Some community members questioned why the district was spending so much money to audit all four foundations instead of just the CCA Foundation. According to a letter from CWDL, fees for auditing the CCA Foundation alone would come to around $16,460.
Litong Tian, one of the students who published the “Ravens for Transparency” report, shared concerns that the scope was too broad and would not address specific issues with CCAF.
“The goal of the audit has to be to reveal the truth, not to spend a large amount of money in a PR stunt to avoid singling out the CCA foundation,” Tian said.
Trustee Michael Allman also filed an addendum stating that he thought the audit should focus on CCA and answer the specific questions raised by the “Ravens for Transparency” report.
However, Trustee Katrina Young said she was opposed to this and urged against focusing on one foundation. She also claimed that the allegations against the foundation have harmed its fundraising efforts, which in turn hurts student programs.
“I would be greatly concerned if we turn this into, for lack of a better word, a witch hunt, which is kind of how I see the addendum, that we are focused on one school and not all four schools. To single out one would do great harm to that one school,” she said.
At a meeting last month, Allman also requested that the board form a committee to oversee the audit process and that he be placed on that committee due to his financial auditing experience.
Other board members, with the exception of Trustee Phan Anderson, rejected this idea.
“It is not our job, no matter our expertise, to do the work that we pay — with tax dollars — our staff to do. In fact, doing so calls into question the independence of these efforts and it undermines our staff’s ability to do this job effectively,” Trustee Jane Lea Smith said.
The district’s request for proposals called for the audit to focus on several topics, including foundations’ financial statements, expenditure and revenue reporting, verification of fund balances, and fee structures and their relations to costs.
The RFP also only required an audit of financials from the most recent fiscal year but included a caveat that the selected auditing firm could expand the scope to include other years if deemed necessary.
The CCA Foundation is unique among other school foundations due to its donation allocation practices; 25% of each direct donation to a club or program is allocated to a larger fund for the program’s department.
While the foundation states that this 25% allocation benefits the club originally targeted for the donation by going toward larger program needs, some parents have said they feel like they don’t get to control where their donations go.
The foundation’s high salary for its executive director has also raised eyebrows. Former director Joanne Couvrette received the highest pay among all the district’s foundations at $161,000 annually.
District officials did not state when the audit would be completed; however, the contract with the audit firm runs through March.
