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The Azle ISD business department is in good standing with both the state and the federal government.
Finance Director Kathy Kendall and her staff were honored for two separate awards during a recent school board meeting.
The business department’s work on the 2008 Comprehensive Annual Financial report earned its honors from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada. This is the 10th consecutive year AISD has earned a “Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting.” The report is completed at the AISD then forwarded to the GFOA for review. A panel of experts review the reports annually from the GFOA and make presentations to those schools – like Azle – the meet the standards.
The finance department also earned Superior Achievement rating under the Texas’ Schools FIRST financial accountability rating system for 2007-2008. The Superior rating is the highest a school district can earn in the state’s accountability system. The Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas measures the quality of a school district’s financial management and reporting. Schools are awarded one of four ratings: Superior, Above Standard, Standard and Substandard. There are 24 financial indictors in the rating system. Azle earned a positive result in all of them. AISD earned perfect scores in each category, including indictor no. 7 which deals with the district’s academic rating. Kendall said a district’s poor academic rating can knock it out of the running for a Superior rating – the only indicator that ties finances to learning. The district also scored well on indictor got strong marks for having a fund balance – a reserve fund – that more than exceeded the district’s minimum needs. A school district is suppose to have enough money in reserve to pay all its bills for three months in case of emergency. In AISD’s case, that amount is about $11 million. But there us more than enough to spare. Kendall said that even delegating about $3 million to the new Hornet Academy and a new transportation facility, there is still about $2 million to spare. The district also earned strong marks for maintaining a tax collection rate over the state’s minimum standard of 98 percent over a three year period. The district tallied 82 points in the rating system, well above the minimum 75 point score for a Superior rating. |
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