WBCSD must display financial accountablity

We all care about the children in our West Bonner County School District community and want the best education for them. Property owners who live here would like to see their tax money for local schools be well spent. According to Merriam-Webster, accounting is the practice of recording and summarizing financial transactions and analyzing, verifying, and reporting the results. So, would having someone skilled in accounting be a great asset on the board? Guess what? We have one, and her name is Kathy Nash. Kathy is an accountant by profession and applies those principles to her work as a trustee. She does this for our school district as a volunteer (not paid), as well as having a private business for others.

Being a school board trustee demands tremendous diligence as they have fiduciary responsibility for our tax dollars. It also requires a huge time commitment since the last meeting lasted from 6 p.m. until after midnight. Additionally, there were over 40 pages in the trustee packet to digest before the meeting. Since Kathy feels it is important to analyze and verify spending, she asked for more time to examine nine pages she had been sent at the last minute. She respectfully recognized it was not the fault of the payroll person, and in fact, she complimented her. She chose to abstain from voting. Another trustee said he had time to read them and made a motion to accept them. This was not only disrespectful to Kathy, it also did not recognize another trustee wanting to do a thorough job of accounting for the district. The motion was passed. Thank you, Trustee Nash, for trying to be the best you can be for the school district. Thank you also for recognizing your fiduciary responsibility to all of us taxpayers.

KATHRYN BARLOW

Spirit Lake