Below is yet another response to a series of misleading articles about public virtual schools. Click here to read what others had to say about our schools and how accountable they are. 

The Twin Falls Times-News

Reader Comment: All public schools accountable for spending

Tim Hill
April 22, 2008

Recent media reports have questioned whether virtual charter schools are held accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars.

As the director of public school finance in Idaho for more than a decade, let me set the record straight: All state funds distributed to public school districts and charter schools have been reported and accounted for.

We know this because all public schools, including Idaho's three virtual charter schools, are required by law to report how they spend public money to the State Department of Education each year.

Idaho's public charter schools are subject to the same reporting requirements as traditional public schools. And like traditional public schools, charter schools have multiple layers of accountability.

At the local level, the school board oversees the financial activity of the school district or charter school. Idaho is a local-control state so the locally elected school district board or charter school board of directors is tasked with making decisions regarding how a school or district spends its money.

At the state level, the State Department of Education publishes reports on how every school district and charter school has spent taxpayer dollars. Idaho law requires the school districts and charter schools to give the Department a detailed financial accounting of all revenues and expenditures annually. This publication, titled "Financial Summaries," is available to the public at http://www.sde.idaho.gov/Statistics/default.asp.

In addition to this reporting, districts and charter schools are also required to have their financial reports audited by an independent auditor and to then submit a copy of that audit report to the State Department of Education. We make sure that the financial information that schools submit to us reconciles with the data in the financial audits. If this is not the case, we find out why.

When the Idaho Legislature passed Idaho's charter school law in the late 1990s, lawmakers decided to make all charter schools, including virtual charter schools, subject to these reporting requirements.

Clearly, the Legislature has created a strong system of accountability at the state and local level for all public schools - traditional and charter schools alike.

Tim Hill is deputy superintendent of finance for the Idaho Department of Education.

http://magicvalley.com/articles/2008/04/22/opinion/reader_comments/135304.txt