Ledyard — Calling two fund-regulating policies "woefully out of date," the Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday night to implement a new districtwide policy on student activity funds.

The policy is a detailed revision of decade-old language that also will replace two other "duplicative" funds, "Monies in School Buildings" and "Activity Funds Management," Finance Committee Chairman Gordon Strickland said.

Student activity funds in each of the district's schools support everything outside of the regular education budget, including donations, clubs and class fundraisers.

The pool is hundreds of thousands of dollars at Led yard High School.

The new policy, which Strickland called a "significant overhaul," will require detailed records of all transactions and weekly deposits of monies collected, and encourages checks rather than cash deposits.

It also grants new authority to school district business manager Bill Merrill, who will develop written procedures governing collection, deposit and disbursement of money for each school, and will establish a record of who, when and why any funds were collected or disbursed.

The policy prohibits the use of funds for accommodation, loan or extension of credit to any person, and requires that copies of an annual financial statement for each school's fund be provided to the Board of Education in August, along with the results of an annual, independent audit.

The implementation of the policy comes three months after the Board of Education contracted a forensic audit of Ledyard High School's student activity fund.

Strickland has said the two actions are unrelated and that the student activity funds have not had issues "for the most part."

a.isaacs@theday.com