By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
The Northfield School Board received the audit report for the last year. The report was completed by the independent firm, Clifton, Larson, and Allen, and was a clean report for the School District. Here’s Luke Greden presenting to the School Board:
“We’ll be issuing what’s known as a clean audit opinion. It just means the financial statements are fairly stated in all material respects. No internal control over financial reporting findings or really any financial reporting findings of any kind. And so, you know, basically just as clean of an audit as you can get.” – Luke Greden with Clifton, Larson, and Allen at the 12/8/2025 School Board Meeting
Greden says it continues a 7-year trend of clean audit reports for Northfield and praised the work of Finance Director Val Mertsdorf and her staff:
Listen to the News:
“For a lot of my districts, they just have the one finding, most years And you guys don’t have that because Val knows what she’s doing.. And so she can go in and has that expertise to review those statements.” – Luke Greden with Clifton, Larson, and Allen at the 12/8/2025 School Board Meeting
Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann stated that it’s taken a lot of work to get to this place and staff training:
But I think something that sets our finance department apart is the level of training we provide. So, there’s a small but mighty finance team in the district office, but there’s also annual training that Val does for all of the administrative assistants in the building. I think over the years, we’ve seen the systems become even stronger year over year. It’s not like, oh, we did that already. Every year, we go back to the basics and we retrain to make sure that people know what the systems are, know what the processes are.” – Dr. Matt Hillmann, Northfield Schools Superintendent at the 12/8/2025 School Board Meeting
Greden said that in his firm, only one other school district they review has maintained a clean audit report for more than 5 years.
Comparison:
The audit also provides an opportunity to compare spending levels with other school districts in the state. It shows that Northfield spends more than $1,000 more on student instruction than schools of similar size and the state average. A similar trend is shown with Special Education spending. The district spends about $100 less per student on school administration than the state average.
School Board member Amy Goerwitz thanked the Northfield community for their support by voting to approve new taxes:
“Thank you to our community, the Northfield School District, for all of the additional levies that they’ve allowed that give us the additional money that we have to spend on the food students. And I look at this and I’m just amazed.” – Amy Goerwitz, Northfield School Board Member at the 12/8/2025 School Board Meeting
View the full report here (starts on page 48)
Newscasts on KYMN air on weekdays at 6am, 7am, 8:30am, Noon, 3pm, and 5pm. If you miss it live, you can subscribe on your preferred podcast app:
> Click here to listen on Spotify
> Click here to listen on Apple Podcast
Do you have a news tip or press release? Send it to us email: Logan@kymnradio.net
