Schools
District 58 Achieves Financial Recognition; District 99 Under Review
About 65 percent of school districts qualify for the ranking, but the number is shrinking and the number of districts on financial watch is growing.
It's not a rare achievement—after all, 65 percent of the school districts earn "Financial Recognition"—but it's nothing to be sneezed at either, considering the direction some other Illinois school districts are heading.
Downers Grove Grade School District 58 was placed in Recognition, the highest financial designation in the Illinois State Board of Education’s annual Financial Profile, for fiscal year 2012, district officials announced this week.
The Financial Profile provides a snapshot in time that helps ISBE gauge school districts’ financial condition based on five indicators of financial performance: fund-balance-to-revenue ratio, expenditures-to-revenue ratio, days cash on hand, percent of short-term borrowing available, and percent of long-term debt remaining.
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The 2013 Financial Profile is based on districts’ Annual Financial Report from Fiscal Year 2012.
The designation categories in descending order are Financial Recognition, Financial Review, Early Warning, and Financial Watch.
Find out what's happening in Downers Grovefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
District 58 has achieved the highest designation every year for the past 11 years, when the ISBE began using the Financial Profile to evaluate districts.
Sixty-five percent of the school districts were in the "Financial Recognition" category. But the number is down form 670 last year to 562 of the state’s 865 districts, according to ISBE officials.
The number of districts listed in Financial Watch, the lowest designation, increased from 17 last year to 45 this year.
Downers Grove's other school district, Community High School District 99, was listed under Financial Review. It has received the designation for three consecutive years after being listed as Early Warning in 2009, according to ISBE documents.
Its overall financial score remained the same from 2011 to 2012.
The 2013 Financial Profile for all districts in Illinois can be found at: http://www.isbe.net/sfms/P/profile.htm
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