Board members ordered the audit in late April after Superintendent Maria Goodloe announced a $61.1 million projected shortfall in the 2000-04 building program. The report initially was slated for completion in late June.

District officials now expect to receive the final report the week of Aug. 9, opening day for the 2004-05 school year. They promise to release the report when they get it.

"The audit is not yet complete, though checkpoints have been met," said district spokeswoman Tricia Crimminger. "Once the audit is complete, it will become a public document."

The audit will cost between $14,000 and $16,000. The exact bill from Bryan, Truesdale, Adkins & Williams won't be known until the accounting firm finalizes the audit, Crimminger said.

Goodloe and board Chairwoman Nancy Cook met Wednesday with Martha Bryan to discuss a draft of the report. Bryan then took back the draft, Cook said.

The group expects to meet again in two weeks. The board will discuss the finished report at its Aug. 23 meeting, Cook said.

The accounting firm has audited the district's budgets for more than a decade. The district initially hired the firm, whose principals have changed over the years, to audit the 1990-91 school year budget, Crimminger said.

The annual audits did not pick up on the looming building program shortfall because they looked at whether the district balanced its numbers only for that year. The audits did not take into account the remaining projects and bills in the five-year, $430 million building program, said the district's new chief financial officer, Donald Kennedy, hired last month.

"I think there was willful hiding of information," said board member Brian Moody, a certified public accountant. "If you can hide it from the board, you can hide it from the auditors."

The audit commissioned by the board will look at the entire building program, dating back to 1998, when voters approved a $175 million bond issue. Board members are eager to get it. Cook said they will study the document to make sure the district corrects all problems that created the shortfall.

"I think we know what happened. We had god-awful internal controls," Moody said. "But whatever the report says, it ought to be public. The worst news is already out there."

The audit's completion date dragged out because the firm had to include items the board added to the building program in May, when it backed an alternative funding method to prevent the district from going into a deficit. That projected deficit grew to $68 million after the board added back two projects Goodloe proposed postponing, plus $2.35 million in school security upgrades and a $2.65 million cushion to absorb unexpected costs.

The shortfall would have begun this summer had the board not acted. But establishment of the funding method, which involved setting up a nonprofit to sell bonds, build schools and sell those schools back to the district, is on time to keep the district in the black. The bond sales should be completed by mid-September.

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