The Vermont State Colleges Board of Trustees voted Nov. 3 to accept the system’s fiscal year 2025 audited financial statements while noting that completion of the federal single audit remains delayed pending final guidance from the federal government.

Trustee Zeller, chair of the Audit and Risk Management Committee, told trustees the committee had met with auditors and that the financial statements delivered in draft form showed “a completely clean audit.” Zeller and the committee emphasized that the federal single-audit portion is awaiting publication of the federal compliance supplement and that timing of that guidance — and not the auditors’ work — was holding up the formal single-audit completion.

A staff member who spoke during the committee report said that based on the draft compliance supplement released in September, the college system would have a clean single audit for Title IV federal student aid programs and that, to the team’s knowledge, this would be the first such clean single-audit result in about 20 years for the system's Title IV funds.

Trustees discussed how federal audit findings trigger program-level re-review cycles and additional audit costs; the committee explained that a finding can require repeat reviews of affected programs and additional auditor work, which carries added cost and administrative time.

Trustees voted by voice to accept the fiscal year 2025 financial statements; the board noted it will return to the single-audit findings and any follow-up actions once the federal compliance supplement is finalized and the single audit is closed.