“South Whidbey School District is off the hook for over $200,000 in excess funding that the Washington State Auditor’s Office claimed the district owed the state.After another look at the matter, State Auditor Brian Sonntag’s office told the school district last month that the excess funding amount has been reduced from the original $263,525 to only $47,569.The funding issue revolves around teaching staff credits based on training and experience. Those credits help set the amount of state education funding provided the school district each year. Auditors reviewing the school district’s books for 1997-98 and 1998-99 found a lack of documentation for teachers’ credits in those two years, resulting in an apparent overpayment to the school district of $263,525.The problem was first publicized last July, shortly after Dr. Martin Laster became the new superintendent of South Whidbey School District. He went to work to try to provide documentation that was lacking in the hope of having the overpayment reduced.Laster said Monday that the Auditor’s Office decided to add a third year to the staff mix audit rather than readdress the two years already audited. The school district was able to provide documentation for most of the teacher credits in the third year, and the state applied those results to the previous two years. By agreement, we used the average error rate for 1999-2000 as a proxy for 1997-98 and 1998-99, rather than the rates determined by our audit for those years, stated a Jan. 19 report from Sonntag’s office.By processing the adjusted staff mix data through the school funding formula, the auditors concluded excess funding for the three years was only $47,569.Laster said that he would like to see the figure reduced even further, but he was pleased by the results of the latest audit. We made significant headway, he said.Jim Adsley, school board president, commended the Auditor’s Office for giving South Whidbey another chance. They’re there to help us, he said. They gave us an opportunity to fix some problems before dropping the hammer.South Whidbey was never going to have to pay the state back the $263,525. Instead, state funding would have been reduced over the next three years to make up the difference.The school district had budgeted for that amount of reduced revenue over three years, however, so the new, lower figure will give the district more room in its budget, according to Laster.Auditor’s Office employees who participated in the audit were not available for comment early this week. “