Cdn.ymaws.com



General Comments from our ESSA Meeting on August 22, 2018 with DPI:NCASBO is providing this document as a guidance to the LEA’s. Finance Officers should work closely with their district leaders to determine the most accurate classification of expenditures. Unfortunately, this is not an exact science. Just do the best you can with coding as accurately as possible.The biggest change was that It was decided that Child Nutrition WILL BE INCLUDED in the per pupil expenditures since it is also included in the NC Report Card. DPI WILL BE POSTING A REVISED DOCUMENT THIS WEEK – PLEASE SEE THIS FOR DETAILS!DPI will provide a preliminary PPE report in the spring for districts to review. This will allow you time to review your data and make changes before DPI closes the year.Regardless if you use location code 000 or 810 - BOTH will be included in the district per pupil expenditure report– the 000 expenditures will just show up on separate line from the 810 expenditures. DPI should be uploading a Location codes document soon (also called Use code and School code). DPI issued this document in 2010 and is in the process of updating it. ESSA Comments and questions from CFO’s: Just one suggestion we implemented locally:? We use 811, 812, and 813 (in use 2) for system wide contracts for Elementary, Middle and High School, and plan to allocated per pupil at year end.? It would be great if they state allowed this in the location code and did the per pupil allocation by level ment: DPI cannot denote the grade spans for elementary, middle and high as there are many groupings throughout the state. Vendors may be approached to assist with this process.We are also planning to allocate some expenses to certain schools at year end, for example all Title I schools or all CTE schools.? Some are those are payroll related, so we want to make sure DPI will allow us to key JE's to salary accounts for location changes only at year-end. 13th month?Comment: DPI will allow you to make adjusting journal entries for location changes at year-end. They have also resolved the Title I issue. Please see the updated guidance when released.How are we to code contracted therapists such as speech, occupational, etc. that serve multiple but not all schools?? The invoices and timesheets we receive are not itemized by the time spent at each location.??Comment: This is a local decision. You can request they document their time and code accordingly or you can code to home school or 000 and show them as district-wide. We have a stand-alone preschool that does not have a school code.? If we use the appropriate purpose code for?5400’s, 6500’s, etc., ?we would be coding over $300,000 to Location 000. Is there an allowable location code that will be excluded by default?? Should we code all these expense to 5340 (not excited about that)?? Any other ideas??Comment: PreK can already be direct coded to 840 and they are considering other options in later years. They are also using exclusions for most pre-school expenditures, please review the updated guidance once it is posted.One concern that I have is regarding some of our EC staff.? Our Program Facilitators and some other support staff have a 6201 purpose code.? I've always used this purpose for them because I see them as leadership and support, not direct instruction.? These individuals are based at the central office, however, they spend the majority of their time in schools working with EC teachers.? The guidance we have from?DPI?says that purpose code 6200 should be coded to location 810, but I see them as a school based expense.? So it makes me question whether I'm using the correct purpose code.? My only other choice would be to use 5210, but like I said, they're not teachers.?Comment: You may use 5210-XXX-135 or 620X-XXX-113. If you use 113 then you must use location code 810.Do you know how Pre-K Transportation and Health Service contracts will be excluded from the per pupil?? I assume we just need to use the Pre-K purpose code for all, but we have historically used other purpose codes when defined. Re: ESSA…this is one of the items I want NCASBO group to discuss with ment: The list of purpose code and PRCs and exclusions is being updated and will be included on the guidance posted on the website. PreK is currently assigned location 840 which also can be used.Our district has centers that are standalone campuses.?In addition to a few pre-K classes sprinkled around the county at various elementary schools, we have one standalone pre-K center that exclusively serves pre-K students.? We use location number 298 for this standalone site which allows us to easily capture costs at this site.? (There are several funding sources that pay these costs with multiple departments who “own” those budget codes.? Services at this center are funded through Head Start, EC pre-K, Title 1 pre-K, NC pre-K, and local funds with multiple directors responsible for the various funding sources. ?We use the segment after the location code to designate the department number that owns the code.? This department number, in the segment after the location number, is how we maintain segregation of access in our software security function to prevent access to other departments’ codes.)? One challenge we discussed involves reporting the standalone pre-K center’s location if we are not allowed to use a location number that has not been designated by DPI.? How would we report the standalone pre-K center?? If we use location 000 to spread it across all schools, we will lose the ability to isolate this site through use of a self-defined location number.? Larger districts may have multiple standalone sites such as this and would have even more difficulty in separating these locations if not allowed to use self-defined location numbers.?We also talked about an example of a nurse at the standalone pre-K center funded through State 032 EC pre-K funds would be coded to purpose 5840 so it would not get excluded from ESSA reporting on the basis of purpose or PRC.? For that matter, neither will expenses coded to purpose 5210 from State PRC 032 pre-K funding.?We also have additional centers. We have one alternative learning center where students from all of our schools may be assigned on a temporary basis.? These students remain students of their sending school while temporarily assigned to this center.? We track expenditures at this location by using a 299 location number.? We would have some of the same challenges mentioned previously in being able to easily isolate this location based on the location segment if not allowed to use a self-defined location number.?We have one career skill center opening this year that will have students from all eight of our high schools who take some classes at this single standalone site for part of their day while taking other classes at their official home school.? Again, we would have similar issues with easily identifying expenses related to this site based on the location segment if not allowed to use a self-defined location number.?One way to deal with these issues could be as follows:1)??????DPI could have a range of location numbers that are reserved for pre-K exclusive locations that could be used by LEA’s that would be excluded from ESSA reporting.2)??????Similarly, there could be range of location numbers that would be excluded in ESSA reporting for expenses that we must incur for students outside of our school district such as having to pay for drivers education for those who are not our students or for the set asides in Title 1 that are required to be shared with private schools.3)??????There could be yet a separate range of location numbers for centers such as our alternative learning center and our career center that would be reported as if they were at location 000 for all schools on the ESSA ment: This issue is still unresolved. We talked about requesting the software vendors to provide a Utility Screen. This would allow districts to enter criteria to use in order for the software to roll it up to DPI as required. For instance: Location code 049 would map to all the districts high schools or maybe just 5 of the districts high schools – it just depends on how each districts sets up the utility mapping. 7.A possible solution to address issues with location codes would be for DPI to allow:1)??????a range of location numbers for LEA’s to have the option to use for standalone EC centers that do not get reported in ESSA report2)??????a range of location numbers for LEA’s to have the option to use for non-LEA expenditure locations (Title 1 private schools, etc.) that do not get reported in ESSA report3)??????a range of location numbers for LEA’s to have the option to use for standalone alternative centers or career centers that do not have an official school number which would get treated as if it were location 000 and be spread across all schools in ESSA report8.How is DPI going to handle items that spread across multiple sites but not county wide? For example, we have expenses with Title I that are exclusive to elementary school sites, but if we use the 000 location it will technically apply the cost across all sites. Before when using 000 we just understood that this was being purchased at the district level and then being distributed. We definitely should not be using 810 in this scenario, but is this new use of 000 going to cause issues when it comes to funding categories that are grade level specific?Comment: DPI can spread to Title I schools because they have a flag denote within EDDIE if it’s a Title I school so this issue has been resolved but the other situations will have to be handled locally with a potential for additional changes in future years. Please review the revised guidance once it is posted.9. Have also come out with a location 860 for people that are assigned to the district but not really a district wide cost. I don’t know if it would be beneficial or more complicated to add location options such as 001 Elementary only, 002 Middle only, and 003 High School only. Comment: DPI can not denote the grade spans for elementary, middle and high as there are many groupings throughout the state. 10.?Federal grant site managers .? I believe the issue is DPI communications say?all object codes 113 must be coded to Central office, but federal grants code school site managers to 113 also and there does not appear to be another acceptable object code to use.? Even if another object code could be used, we would need permission from federal folks to transfer to new ment: This is unresolved at this point. We THINK you may could use 5210-XXX-135 or 620X-XXX-113. If you use 113 should then use location code 810. 11. ?For coding purposes, we have an issue with mainland vs island.??The majority of our accounts payable items are for mainland schools only (supplies, materials, maintenance, technology library, Nurse/Medical, EC services and others). The mainland schools have their own mainland school (central) support which is different from the island school and different from central office. With ESSA our only choices for location coding are individual schools or all schools. What we need is a subset location for the mainland schools for day to day coding that we could allocate at year end among the mainland schools. Doing this however will produce a location error code all during the year.? For us the mainland schools are essentially being run as one school for operational purposes and more importantly with the severe reduction in staffing levels over the past five years, we are no longer able to code down the school level for the mainland schools on a day to day basis.? We just do not have the manpower as we no longer have an accounts payable department.? ?The best solution would be for us to continue coding to the mainland support location code (if this could be worked out). Otherwise we are left with coding to 000 all schools.? Any thoughts, suggestions, or anything that might help is ment: This is a local decision within the guidelines provided. Please review the updated guidance when posted.12. We have four restart schools, where we are trying to code everything possible to the school level, since we have to expend the required conversion amount set by DPI.? With that said, my concern is that they are getting everything coded to them at the school level, while the rest of the district is still using 000 in some cases, so the restart schools will also get a portion of those expenditures spread out to them...almost like double up on some of the expenditures for the report card.?Comment: At this point, we’re just going to have to use this first year as a learning year and do the best we can. Realizing immaterial expenditures could “stack” up to become material. Review the PPE report in the spring to help with this.13. We would be interested in knowing what location code should be utilized for Principal Fellows and MSA ment: Code to School code where they are working.14. Migrant recruiters are 6200 purpose code in COA but not really central services. Can we change purpose code in COA or should we leave the purpose code 6200 and code to location 000?Comment: Need more information with this one. Are they working with students in the schools?16. I am interested in how everyone codes all their local insurance premiums... property; general liability; worker's comp... etc... I have been coding 6910 as a board item, but to me, these are not central office items and 6910 is considered central office.? Why is Board of Education considered central office instead of a district-wide?by school??Comment: Recommend coding to 6600 and use 810 as location code. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download