An accounting firm hired to examine sharing agreements between two northwest Iowa school districts has found delayed payments and incorrect calculations that date back to mid-2022, but no fraud.
Murray Stanley, the CPA who briefed area residents last night, said Ruthven-Ayrshire was overpaid and Graettinger-Terril is owed $134,000. “They had charts that they were using or spreadsheets they were using to prepare these calculations and what I just found were that the were incomplete or kind of inaccurately calculated,” he said. “…No fraud, just inaccurate calculations and incomplete calculations.”
Last month, the superintendent of the Graettinger-Terril and Ruthven-Ayrshire School Districts was placed on administrative leave, but no official reason for the move has been publicly announced. Ten days ago, Jeff Dicks was hired to be the interim superintendent for the two districts. He’s promising to be transparent to the communities about the situation.
“I’m not perfect, but when it comes to school finance I get very persnickety about doing things right because when fingers are pointed at the school, employees take offense. I don’t want that for our employees,” Dicks said last night. “If I do something, I’ll be accountable for it.” Dicks retired in 2024 after serving as Newell-Fonda’s Superintendent for 19 years and he’s recently been interim superintendent at Estherville Lincoln Center.
The CPA who provided last night’s public briefing said the formal agreements outlining shared positions between the two districts could not be found for the past three years, so his firm had to use school board minutes, interviews with school district staff and paperwork from the just-concluded 2026 fiscal year to produce its analysis.
In 2011, the two school districts entered a “sports co-op” that united their athletic teams. Marshal Lewis, the superintendent for the two districts who is on administrative leave, was hired in 2020. Lewis is a graduate of Terril High School and had previously served as superintendent of the Belmond-Klemme School District.
(By Ed Funston, KILR, Eshterivlle/Anthony Gonzalez, KICD, Spencer/Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson)