By Rebecca Houg, staff writer

Greg Larson, from Hill, Larson, Walth and Buhs, presented the Albert Lea School District&8217;s yearly audit for board review and approval at its regular meeting Monday night.

As of June 1, 2006, the district had only one month&8217;s worth of operating expenses in the general fund balance.

&8220;From a conservative standpoint, I think you wouldn&8217;t want to go much lower as far as fund balance goes,&8221; Larson said.

Larson didn&8217;t make a recommendation for the amount the school board should maintain.

Other items Larson noted include:

a 4.38 percent increase in revenues between 2005 and 2006, expenditures were skewed because of repaying the bonds of 1998, and the general fund balance dropped because of the bond repayment.

In other business, the board:

– Heard from Riley Worth, high school journalism teacher. He stepped forward with three students who were among 16 from Albert Lea High School that attended a national journalism conference in Nashville.

The students shared some of their favorite experiences from the conference. Student Dani Minehart said the conference was &8220;simply amazing.&8221;

&8220;It opens your eyes and you get to see what other schools are up to,&8221; she said.

Jaclyn Rehmke, a first-year newspaper staff member, said she kept an open mind to all the experiences. She also said she learned a lot from the different sessions.

Jill Freeman said she liked the session she attended that focused on being more descriptive in her writing and how to write a good headline. She said she&8217;s already been using what she learned in her writing since she&8217;s returned from the conference.

– Heard from Butch Harves, director of technology. He updated the board on the pilot program they have going using &8220;smart boards&8221; in classrooms.

Jolinda Schreiber asked if they could see a smart board in action and Harves said it was in the works for the next board meeting.

Harves also has visited with Charter Communications to evaluate the school&8217;s internet infrastructure. The school has about a 3 megabyte bandwidth and the demand is about 12 megabyte right now. Harves said part of the problem is from him encouraging teachers to use steaming video in their teaching, which is a good thing but it also puts a greater demand on the bandwidth.

Harves will be losing one-third of his capital budget with the budget cuts due after the levy failure.

&8220;It&8217;s going to hurt,&8221; he said. &8220;We aren&8217;t going to be on the renewal of computers that we are now. There are going to be some older computers in the district.&8221;

Right now, the district is on a five to six year replacement cycle for technology and after the levy failure, they will be on an eight year cycle.

– Accepted a $5,000 donation from Hy-Vee for Halverson Elementary School from their Smiles for Education program.

– Accepted a $500 donation from the Minnesota Community Foundation &8212; Marv Wangen Memorial Scholarship to award to an Albert Lea High School graduate.

– Several policies were presented for a first reading and three policies with no changes were approved after a second reading: chronic infectious disease, attendance at out of district in-service meetings, and investment.

– Approved the reassignment of two students, one leaving and one joining the district.