The Iowa City Community School District is preparing to cut millions of dollars from its budget and potentially close schools. But a member of its Financial Oversight Committee warns that without accurate financial information, decision-makers are “shooting in the dark.”
The committee was appointed to help put the district’s fiscal house in order after years of overspending, faulty oversight and missed audits.
The house, to put it mildly, is a mess.
Last week, according to reporting by The Gazette’s Grace King, the committee learned that the district overspent one of its capital project funds by $45 million. It turns out district leaders failed to record $30 million in bond repayments in 2023.
As a result, the capital projects fund appeared to contain $30 million that hadn't already been spent. So, the school board kept approving projects using money the district didn't have.
One big reason the error wasn’t caught is that fiscal year audits were remarkably late. The district didn't complete the fiscal 2023 audit until August 2025, and it finished the fiscal 2024 audit in June 2026. The audit for fiscal 2026 won’t be done until March 2027.
The district’s chief operating officer, Cur...