Help for Financial Reports
 

Getting Started
This section of Ed-Data provides five different ways to look at the financial activities of school districts and county offices of education as reported to the California Department of Education (CDE). Each report gives a particular perspective on the district’s or county’s transactions. Districts report their data to the state using the Standardized Account Code Structure (SACS). For more information, see About SACS and An Explanation of Fund Accounting.



All Funds summarizes the various required and permitted funds that districts maintain, including the funds they have for regular daily operations, for special uses, and what is held in various reserve accounts.

General Fund, one of the funds displayed in the previous tab, provides both summary and detail information about the district’s operating revenues and expenditures. (For county offices of education, this is known as the County School Service Fund, but on this website it is still located in the General Fund tab.)

Activity shows how the money in the General Fund is spent based on activities or functions, such as instruction and administration.

Instructional Programs has the General Fund expenditures for each instructional purpose, such as regular K-12 education, Special Education, Vocational Education, etc.

Revenue Sources presents General Fund revenues according to their program or revenue source, including restricted and unrestricted.

The rules for recording revenues and expenditures come from the California School Accounting Manual (CSAM) and are consistent with federal regulations and guidelines about generally accepted accounting principles. The numbers in the left-hand column on each of these reports refer to the specific CSAM references: fund numbers on the "All Funds" tab, object codes on the "General Fund" tab, and function codes on the "Activity" tab. CSAM itself reflects the state’s Standardized Account Code Structure (SACS) that all districts must use. (More about SACS)

Placing your mouse on the will show the CSAM definition of the category.

All Funds
 
This report gives you an overview of a school district’s financial situation. It covers all revenues and expenditures. The various district funds are divided into three groups of related accounts: Governmental, Proprietary, and Fiduciary.

Districts vary in which funds they use, especially in the proprietary and fiduciary categories.



Each fund includes a beginning balance, total revenues, expenditures, other financing sources/uses (for example, transfers among funds), and an ending balance.

Placing your mouse on the on this or any tab will produce a summary of what that subcategory contains. For example, Capital Project Funds account for the construction of major buildings.

The All Funds report is a summary of almost all the money that flows into and out of the district during its fiscal year July 1 through June 30. The one exception, applicable to only some districts, is Agency Funds. These optional funds do not have to be reported to the CDE, although they are included in the district's audited financial statement. (See the full list of required and permitted funds or learn more about funds and California’s system of fund accounting.)


General Fund
 
The General Fund report includes a summary of the district’s revenues according to the source, expenditures according to types of items purchased or services obtained, and the ending balance. This tab is where you can find out, for example, how much federal money a district received, how much it spent on employee benefits, and what its books and supplies cost.

It shows which revenues and expenditures are restricted or unrestricted. It also provides dollar amount per student compared to the per-student average for the same type of district (elementary, high school, unified), the statewide average for that type of district, and the statewide per-student average for all districts.



The “pop-trends” button gives ten years of General Fund revenues and expenditures. You can get a summary of the subcategory by placing your mouse on the .

For a pop-up report with line-by-line details, click on the Object Code number(s) in the left-hand column. On that detailed report, placing your mouse on a particular code gives a summary of what it contains. You can also click on the to the right of the Object Code to go directly to the CSAM definitions.

This General Fund report begins with the 2003-04 school year. It is similar to the “Financial Statement for District” which is still available for previous years.

The General Fund tab also includes:
  • Other Financing Sources/Uses (often transfers among funds)
  • A summary of the General Fund’s beginning and ending balance,
  • A list of the components of the ending balance, and
  • The Current Expense of Education, a required special calculation that measures just the cost of direct educational services.

Activity
 
This report looks at General Fund expenditures only. It answers the question of which activities or services the district’s money is spent on, such as administration, health services, pupil transportation, and maintenance/construction – in addition to instruction.

The information is based on the function code, such as instruction. To see how money under each function was spent, click on the dollar sign to see it by the standard object codes, such as salaries, books, etc.



The pie chart on this tab enables you to see at a glance the proportions the district spends on eight broad categories of activities. The table contains the details, including total expenditure, the amount spent per student, the percent of the district’s total expenditures, and a comparison to all districts of the same type and to the statewide average for all districts. The bar charts provide a visual comparison of the district’s expenditure choices to statewide averages for the same type of districts and for all districts.

Instructional Programs
 
The Instructional Programs report lists General Fund expenditures for each instructional program, or Goal, such as regular K-12 education, Special Education, Vocational Education, and Adult Education. It shows how much of district expenditures of all types go to a particular purpose. For example, both a Special Education teacher (an instructional function) and a Special Education counselor (a guidance and counseling function) would be charged to the Special Education Goal.



Individual school districts may show great variety in the programs they operate outside of regular and Special Education. For example, if you compare two districts of similar size, one may have little or no expenditures for Vocational Education, while the other may spend millions for that program.

Revenue Sources
 
This report shows districts’ General Fund (and counties’ School Service Fund) revenues according to their source or program. They are separated into unrestricted and restricted federal, state, and local resources.



The information is listed according to the resource code. Examples include State Lottery, Class Size Reduction, Special Education, NCLB, Staff Development, Tenth Grade Counseling, etc.

Since a given district will only use a fraction of these codes, the default report includes only those that the district actually uses. If you want to know the full range of possible resources, click “All Resource Codes.”

The numbers in the Total Revenues column include links to a summary of available revenues, expenditures, and remaining balance for each revenue source. If a program has a zero with a link (i.e., is underlined), that signifies activity within the given fiscal year due to carryover from the prior year, other financing sources and contributions, deferred revenue, or a beginning balance.

Comparing District Finances
Curious about how one district compares to others? Go to the pull-down menu and select Compare District Finances. You can use the default to get a report for similar districts, or you can select your own criteria for comparisons. You can also find out which districts are highest—or lowest—in criteria that you select, or create a custom list of districts. For a further explanation, see District Comparisons Help.

The Statewide Picture
You can also look at the big picture: the revenues, expenditures and averages for all school districts combined or for all county offices. Go to the state level and use the pull-down menu to select Financial Reports for State.


Education Data Partnership
Comments to ed-data@cde.ca.gov.
Questions about the data files?

All contents copyright © 2010, Education Data Partnership.
All rights reserved. Revised August 5, 2010.
URL: http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us