Although charter schools are not subject to paying their teachers based on the minimum salary schedule, HB3 requires that open enrollment charter schools pay the state’s contribution on the portion of a member’s TRS eligible salary that exceeds the statutory minimum or the “state minimum.” Members include classroom teachers, full-time librarians, full-time counselors certified under … Read More
Federal Financial Drawdown
Federal Risk Level The Federal Fiscal Monitoring Division conducts an annual risk assessment of all charters, to determine their potential risk of noncompliance. Based upon the outcome of the risk assessment, charters are assigned a risk level of low, medium, or high. The division updates the risk assessment model annually to ensure that risk indicators … Read More
New 1099 Form to be used for 2020
Don’t let the new form make you uneasy. It’s filed just the same way that the old 1099-Misc non-employee compensation forms were filed. Your old box 7 vendors are now just getting their own special form, the 1099-NEC. What’s new? Effective for the 2020 tax year, form 1099-NEC has been implemented by the IRS. The … Read More
Audit Update: Submitting Your Annual Financial Report
It’s Audit Time! In Today’s Tip, we’ll be discussing the steps you need to take to submit/upload your Annual Audit — also referred to as the Annual Financial Report (AFR). At CSS, we help review and assist in the completion and submission of the audit for our Charter School Success clients. On-time audits are required to Pass FIRST, … Read More
Charter FIRST Hearing
Charter FIRST is the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST), which is detailed in Texas Education Code 39.082. The purpose and goal of having a financial accountability rating system is to ensure that open enrollment charter schools continually strive to improve the management of their financial resources and provide transparency and openly report results … Read More
Budget Timelines and Amendments
What is the role and purpose of the school budget? The charter school budget—and accompanying process—provides charters and their leaders with an opportunity to justify the collection and expenditure of public funds. In its most simple definition, a school budget describes a charter’s plan for the upcoming year as related to anticipated revenues and expenditures. … Read More
Updated State Aid Template available from TEA
The Charter School 2020-2021 State Aid Template is NOW AVAILABLE on the Texas Education Agency website! Over the last several months, Charter School Success has been working with our client charters to help develop their 2020-2021 budget, using the 2019-2020 State Aid Template information and calculations. Now that the 2020-2021 Estimate of State Aid Template … Read More
National School Lunch Program
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is an extensive, federally assisted meal program meant to provide nutritionally balanced meals to school children of need throughout the nation. In FY 2019, schools served over 4.8 billion lunches to children nationwide. The NSLP fed more than 30 million students. At the federal level, the program is administered … Read More
Fiscal Policies
Operating a Charter School is engaging for administrators but can also be very rewarding on many levels. It is also serious business. Charter Schools should have internal controls in place to provide reasonable assurance that their goals and objectives are accomplished. Internal control is all the policies and procedures management use to achieve the following: … Read More
Budget Amendments
When do you need a Budget Amendment? During the fiscal year of a charter school, the school’s board may need to amend the school charter approved budget to reflect changes in operations, the educational programs, demographics, or enrollment since the beginning of school. Budget amendments are an essential part of the budgetary process and are … Read More