Minnesota school district’s finances under scrutiny ahead of referendum

Neubeck said the district first learned of issues with the 2023-24 budget around the time it was preparing the budget for this school year. Ashley Bocchi, who was hired as financial director at the beginning of 2024 and has since departed, found that the previous director, Todd Lechtenberg, had miscalculated an increase in staff wages, leading to a budget deficit.

The increase stemmed from budget negotiations the year before that resulted in a 5% bump in wages. The models used by the district and presented to the school board, however, inadvertently showed a 1.5% increase.

The district said that during the transition from Lechtenberg to Bocchi, an outside financial adviser also found bank reconciliations that had not been completed, low cash reserves and an $800,000 credit line that had been run up.

Lechtenberg, who was contracted part-time as financial director for Byron, left the district in early 2024 to join Austin Public Schools. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Byron School Board Chair Duane Quam III declined a request for comment.

“In hindsight, more could have been done,” Neubeck said. “But I will tell you that when you hire people with that expertise, then you would expect that they would follow through on that expertise — that’s what you pay for.”