BENTON HARBOR, Mich – The Benton Harbor Area Schools school district is seeing some positive news. 

At Tuesday’s School Board meeting the board heard the findings of the latest audit report. 

The audit showed that the district reduced the debt from 4.3 million dollars to 3.7 million dollars. 

“The auditors presented their annual financial report this evening and it included good news for the district, the district improved its fund balance by approximately $680 thousand dollars, the districts fund balance is at its highest point even though it’s in a deficit in the last 12 years,” Benton Harbor Area Schools CFO Scott Johnson said. 

District officials said the deficit reduction will eventually help reduce the districts long-term debt. 

“One of the biggest ways because most of our expenditures are for people, we are a service organization like other school districts,” Johnson said.  

The school district spoke about their family literacy event which is the district latest effort to improve literacy amongst the district’s students. 

“We had a family literacy night at our hull building which is the first and third grade and had 70 participants which is a pretty big number and big group of students were able to choose books to take home,” Benton Harbor Area Schools Interim Superintendent Patricia Robinson said.  

Tuesday’s School Board meeting comes while the district is working with the state of Michigan to improve the financial and academic struggles the district has been facing.