At a glance
The district's internal auditor told the School Board that its 2024-25 books turned up two significant deficiencies, and both trace back to how many people left the business office that year. The board was not getting timely financial reports, bank reconciliations, or claims auditor reports, which meant it was making decisions without the paperwork it relies on. A separate audit of the district's credit cards found no fraud, but did find the district out of compliance with its own policy, including a card limit set at $20,000 against a policy cap of $15,000, and missing receipts that led to late fees. It was Superintendent Todd Hilgendorff's first board meeting, day seven on the job, and he told the board the audit describes a year that predates the current business official and that most of the findings are already fixed. The board also heard that an engineering firm is donating a new clock mechanism for the long-broken clock tower at Montgomery C. Smith.
Roll Call, Agenda & Committee Reports
The board opened with the pledge, a roll call at which every member answered here, and short reports from its committees.
Key points
- All seven members answered the roll call: Mark DePace, Amanda Grubler, Diana Howard, Matthew Mackerer, Maureen Sheridan, Lou Zapp, and Michael Zibella.
- The audit committee met on July 16 with internal auditor Michael Wolf, who was present to walk the full board through the same material: a detailed audit of the district's credit cards and an annual risk assessment.
- The policy committee has not met, but its chair met with the superintendent and another staff member to bring them up to speed on the code of conduct work so summer implementation continues. The committee expects to meet at some point in August, possibly off its regular schedule, and return to monthly meetings in September.
- The finance committee is preparing to schedule its first meeting.
- The board president welcomed the new superintendent to his first board meeting and thanked district and community members for the warm reception. The board is scheduling summer retreats to settle board communications, its working relationship with the superintendent, and goals for the 2026-27 year.
The auto-captions render the board members' surnames inconsistently (Deace, Macker, Moren, Zap, Zabella). Spellings here follow the district's own published board roster.
Facilities: Pool Project on Hold, Auditorium Renovation Starts in September
The facilities report ran through where each piece of the capital work stands, including one project paused over cost.
Key points
- The pool is closed for renovations, but the major part of the project is on hold because of the expense, and is being worked through alongside the capital project.
- Under the energy performance contract, the boiler room is almost completely redone. Demo is planned on the remaining electrical work, and demo on the piping will resume with a temporary domestic hot water setup installed.
- Lighting materials have been delivered to a storage trailer at the high school; the gym retrofit follows after that.
- Pre-construction meetings with the primary contractors were held on July 6. Contracts have been distributed and are awaiting signatures, with approval expected at the next board meeting.
- Roofing, storage buildings, and salt shed work were described as starting around August 8. Tennis court work is pushed to roughly June of next year because of the tennis programs. The auditorium will be completely redone, starting September 28 and finishing around the beginning of November.
- The cooler and freezer demo is complete and the new units are installed. On Smart Schools, vendors are updating prices after the delay; about $50,000 remains on that balance, and the whole project was described as about $1.7 million, with the majority of the work to be done after school hours.
Parts of the facilities report are read from notes and come through the captions unevenly, including the acronyms for the hot water work. Details here are limited to what is legible.
A Donated Clock for Montgomery C. Smith
An engineer who grew up in Hudson told the board his firm is donating a replacement mechanism for the clock tower at Montgomery C. Smith, which has not worked in living memory.
Key points
- Mike Sullivan, a 1987 Hudson High School graduate who works for an engineering firm and has worked on district capital projects for the last ten to twelve years, made the presentation.
- The existing mechanism is original to the building, from its era as Chancellor Livingston High School, and is almost 100 years old. A representative from a Massachusetts company that rehabs clocks and clock towers advised against repairing it and recommended an upgraded mechanism instead, which is simpler to operate and needs little maintenance.
- The firm is donating an upgraded clock mechanism and a controller, with a ship date given as the last week in July.
- District facilities staff have already run a new circuit to the base of the clock and upgraded the lights behind the clock face, which is now backlit.
- A board member said the clock had been a topic of conversation for decades and that she could not remember it ever working.
The captions render the engineering firm three different ways in the space of two minutes, so it is not named here. The presenter describes a recent merger with a national company.
Internal Auditor: Two Significant Deficiencies in the 2024-25 Risk Assessment
The internal auditor presented the annual risk assessment for 2024-25 and named two significant deficiencies, both rooted in turnover in the business office.
Key points
- The auditor described the risk assessment as required yearly, and as an audit that is an inch deep but a mile wide, covering everything in the business office plus extra classroom activity funds and food service.
- The first significant deficiency: during 2024-25 the business official, the superintendent, the payroll clerk, the claims auditor, and the treasurer all left at different points, and that turnover meant internal controls were not always applied consistently. He said staff took on responsibilities outside their normal roles to keep things running.
- The second significant deficiency: the board was not receiving timely financial reports or bank reconciliations, the documents it relies on to make decisions, and was not receiving claims auditor reports at all.
- He explained why that second point matters: when a board appoints a claims auditor, it gives up its own ability to approve expenses, so the claims auditor has to report back on what they find. Without those reports, the board did not know what was going on.
- Payroll, cash receipts, and cash disbursements were all affected by the vacancies. Investment income was noted as a positive, and IT, food service, and extra classroom activity kept the same risk profile.
- Asked which findings were still open, the auditor said the written report does not separate those out, and committed to returning in two to three weeks to re-evaluate and leave a status report for the board and the incoming business official.
The auditor returns in two to three weeks for a re-evaluation before the current business official leaves, and will produce the 2025-26 report later.
Credit Card Audit: No Fraud, But Out of Compliance With Its Own Policy
The year's focus-area audit looked at credit card policy and procedures, partly because departing staff had card access.
Key points
- The auditor said one reason for choosing this focus area was that some of the people who left had card access and could have been using the card, so transactions were reviewed to make sure nothing had gone wrong.
- He reported finding no fraud and no issues with the cards themselves.
- The district's own policy is more restrictive than many, and much of what he had to write up was non-compliance with that policy rather than bad practice. One example: the policy commits the district to going out for an RFP, which is unusual for a credit card.
- The policy states the card limit should not exceed $15,000. The limit was set at $20,000. He suggested the policy committee decide which figure is right.
- Transactions were tested for documentation. Some lacked sufficient backup, again tied to the vacancies. All but one minor transaction were for educational purposes; the issue was paperwork, not spending.
- Because policy requires documentation before a bill is paid, and the claims auditor cannot approve payment without it, the district got hit with late fees and interest. He recommended a firm 30-day deadline for receipts and noted another district he works with revokes card privileges when receipts are not turned in.
- Because the board was not receiving claims auditor reports, findings and errors he identified never reached it.
The auditor put two questions to the board: what the credit card limit should be, and how long staff get to turn in receipts. Board members also asked how many cards a district should carry, and he described a common setup of one card for the superintendent and one for the business office, both kept in a safe and released only against a purchase order.
Executive Sessions, Personnel & Consent Agenda
The board went into a short executive session on employment history, then handled its personnel and consent agendas.
Key points
- The board entered executive session at 6:23 p.m. to discuss the employment history of a particular person or persons, and exited at 6:30 p.m.
- Personnel agenda items A2 through A8 and B1 through B2 were approved on a motion, then item A1 was approved separately, with one member recusing.
- Nobody had signed up for public participation.
- The consent agenda was approved in two parts, items A through R together and item S separately, with one member recusing due to a conflict of interest.
- No policies were on the agenda.
- A second executive session on employment history was entered at 6:40 p.m., with no further business to follow.
Superintendent's Report: Filling the Business and Finance Job
In his first report to the board, on day seven, the new superintendent covered the search to replace the district's top finance official and put the audit in context.
Key points
- He thanked the board and the district for the reception in his first week, and said he had spent it listening and learning.
- Christy Ferry, the executive director for business and finance, has accepted a position in another district; her final day is toward the end of August.
- The posting for her replacement closes at the end of the business day on July 22. He and another administrator had begun roughly twenty-minute screening interviews, with committee interviews targeted for that Friday and a final interview with him in the following week or so.
- He said the aim is to move quickly enough that the person hired can give notice to their current district and leave as small a gap as possible, while still running the process with fidelity.
- He acknowledged five tenure appointments on the personnel agenda, with a reception to recognize them at another meeting.
- On the audit, he emphasized that 2024-25 predates Christy Ferry's time in the role, that at the audit committee meeting most of the discussion was confirming items already addressed, and that the forthcoming 2025-26 audit is the more relevant picture of where the district stands now.
Board Discussion: Bliss Towers, John L. Edwards & Upcoming Dates
Board members raised two city development stories that touch district families, and read out the fall meeting schedule.
Key points
- A member urged colleagues to keep an eye on the public comment period underway on the Bliss Towers renovation, noting that a lot of district students live in that housing, and suggested contributing to the comment period as the redesign is considered.
- Members discussed the company looking at purchasing John L. Edwards, noting that a city board had approved something recently. One member said their understanding is that the biggest remaining hurdle is anticipated state funding, which they thought is announced in early spring, so there may be no further news until March or April of next year.
- Members mentioned Waterfront Wednesday, which started the week before, Camp Invention for elementary students, and a fundraising car wash on the 25th.
- Upcoming dates were read out: a board meeting August 11 at 6 PM in the auditorium, a facilities committee meeting August 24, a special board meeting August 25 at 6 PM, a facilities committee meeting September 14, and a regular board meeting September 15 at 6 PM.
- As an information item, the October 20 board meeting moves to the high school library because of the auditorium renovation.
A board member tied the district to two City of Hudson land-use stories: the Bliss Towers renovation, where the city's Planning Board has been holding a public hearing, and the possible sale of the John L. Edwards building. Both connections were made by the speaker in the room, not added here.
In reading the schedule, the presiding officer first misread a date as August 13, 2024, caught it, and restated the correct date. Only the restated dates are reported above. The member who described the John L. Edwards funding timeline said explicitly that they did not know it off the top of their head.
About this page
FUTURE HUDSON is an experiment in civic engagement: every public meeting of the City of Hudson since January 2026, transcribed and made readable, so any resident can follow what the city is deciding without attending every meeting. This page covers one meeting; see the full archive.
How it was made
The meeting video was transcribed automatically; the transcript was then organized into sections and summarized. The raw transcript is above, every claim can be checked against it.
What to be skeptical of
The transcript is automated and contains speech-recognition errors; names and numbers may be wrong. This page has not been reviewed by a human. Nothing here is an official record, the school district's official minutes are authoritative.
About coverage of this body
Board of Education meetings are livestreamed by the Hudson City School District to its own YouTube channel. The school district is a separate government from the City of Hudson. If a meeting is missing from the archive, the recording was likely not posted. See the archive index for the full coverage note.