Local schools expect to maintain high financial marks
The Bryan and College Station school districts scored well in the state's recently issued financial accountability ratings, but administrators in both districts believe those scores will only increase in the coming years.
College Station received an "Above Standard Achievement" rating from the Texas Education Agency -- the second-highest rating -- while Bryan ISD received the agency's highest ranking, "Superior Achievement."
Districts are required to prepare an annual financial accountability report. The rating system's purpose is to ensure that districts are accountable to the public for their financial practices.
Districts can be ranked as "Superior Achievement," "Above Standard Achievement," "Standard Achievement," "Substandard Achievement," and "Suspended-Data Quality." A corrective action plan only has to be filed with the Texas Education Agency by school districts that received a Substandard Achievement or Suspended-Data Quality rating.
More than 780 districts received Superior Achievement and more than 200 received Above Standard Achievement out of the 1,029 districts. Twelve school districts in the state failed the system.
TEA is looking at changing the rating guidelines next year to avoid penalizing districts that spend portions of their fund balances to adjust to the slow economic recovery. The agency is also going to adjust a portion of its financial accountability system guidelines.
The College Station district lost points for operating under another method of accounting: the Governmental Accounting Standards Board financial accountability system.
Glynn Walker, CSISD's deputy superintendent for human resources and business services, said next year TEA's standards will reflect the GASBE system, which will in turn keep College Station from losing those points.
The district scored 70 out of 80 points.
Walker said the district also lost points because its interest earnings on investments were less than $20 per student and for decreasing its fund balance by more than 20 percent in the fiscal year. Walker said that was because the school board designated $16 million of the fund balance for new school openings.
The Bryan school district has received the report's highest rating for the past nine years, or since the system began, scoring 77 points, said Chief Financial Advisor Amy Drozd.
The district fell short in the ratings' required staff-to-student ratio, she said, although it had the appropriate numbest of teachers. The system requires a 7.0-to-14 ratio for staff to students and the district has a 6.9885-to-14 proportion.
That section of the report is somewhat deceiving, Drozd said. The system doesn't allow for variances between districts that contract out services and those that do not, creating fluctuations in the number of staff reported for the results.
Drozd said the district also lost a few points for having a fund balance that was a little too high and for not having strong investment earnings.
"Investments are just not doing as well as they used too," she said.
Like College Station, the district failed to meet the more than $20 per student requirement in investment earnings.
"We are in good company there. There were 438 districts that scored zero in this category," she said.
