The views stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors of this newspaper. We welcome supporting or opposing views on any published item. Received September 8, 2026.
Two full fiscal years. Roughly $100 million. Not one dollar of it signed off by an auditor. Regional School District 17 (RSD17) has had no audit opinion on anything it has spent since June 30, 2024. The audit for one of those years is not due until December. The other was due last December. As for the one still to come, the district’s auditor, asked whether it could be on time, said, “I would say not, given the current situation.”
The 2022 and 2023 audits reported material weaknesses: accounts not reconciled on time, journal entries posted with no one reviewing them, ledger balances that did not match the supporting records, and, in 2022, receivables written off because the charges could not be documented. Those are the conditions under which money goes missing. The 2024 audit marked them corrected. Then the finance director left, the district has not closed a year since, and the new auditors are reporting control deficiencies again. I am not alleging wrongdoing. Rather, I am pointing to significant red flags, warnings that it can happen here.
How did we get here? Four of the district’s past five audits missed the state deadline. On August 18 the auditors told the Board of Education the 2025 audit was “about 80 to 85% complete” and, on HKTV’s recording of the meeting, blamed the delay on “the district’s internal staff turnover, limited resources within the finance department, internal control deficiencies requiring additional audit procedures, and prior year accounting corrections and restatements.” Given all that, the board still moved forward with the $151.9 million appropriation and a September 24 vote.
The board had heard that explanation before. The 2022 and 2023 audits blamed the same thing, “turnover of multiple key staff resources,” and said the lack of accurate information “delayed the completion of the audit and other submissions required by the State.” Both years the auditors found “no procedures in place to follow up on past due accounts” and told the district to “develop adequate policies and procedures” for closing its books. In April 2026 the finance director told the board that once the audit was done she would start “a project to document high-level accounting procedures.” Nearly three years after the auditors first asked, the procedures had still not been written down. The board chair has written that the interim finance director is “the sixth person in this position since January 2020,” and that a “planned temporary outsourcing of support staff has stretched into year 3.” The May minutes show the district still assembling paperwork to collect state reimbursement on projects already finished.
Now look at the financial ask: $151.9 million. It shrinks to $77 million only if every dollar of roughly $75 million in state reimbursement arrives, and reimbursement comes only for eligible costs, only against paperwork filed correctly and on time, and only in full after the state audits the finished project. Whatever the office fails to claim, or the state disallows, lands on the taxpayers of Haddam and Killingworth. The $75 million must be claimed, form by form, by an office still chasing the state’s money on the last round of projects.
The district also owes the holders of its 2019 bonds audited financial statements every February 28. This year it has filed nothing, not even the late notice it filed in 2022 and 2023. The bond market will want those statements before it lends $77 million. So will Moody’s, which rates the district Aa3 and has had that rating under review since June 30 “due to lack of sufficient information.” A weaker rating means higher interest on every dollar borrowed for the next 25 years.
None of this is an argument against the high school. It is an argument about order. An audit is a snapshot; the reimbursement paperwork runs for the life of the project, and every claim this office misses comes out of our wallets. The fix is a business office that can close a year on time, a corrective action plan adopted in open session, and a clean, on-time audit to prove it. Vote no on September 24. Fix the books. Then ask for $152 million. That is not obstruction. It is a demand for fiscal accountability and responsibility.
Eric Nunes, Ph.D., Killingworth
