NEWS RELEASE 05/16/12
New GASB User Guide to School Districts’ Finances Helps Taxpayers Find Answers to Many Questions
Norwalk, CT, May 16, 2012—How can taxpayers follow how their money is being spent on public education? What is the difference between a school district’s budget and its financial statements? How can you determine if your school district’s financial health is improving or declining? What assets does your school district own, and how much does it owe?Taxpayers can learn the answers to those questions—and many others—in a new, easy-to-understand guide to school district financial statements just published by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The guide is the second in an expanded, fully revised and updated series published this year by the GASB, the independent, not-for-profit organization that sets accounting standards for the almost 90,000 local and state governments in the U.S., including the more than 13,000 independent public school districts.
What You Should Know about Your School District’s Finances: A Guide to Financial Statements, 2nd edition, offers parents, teachers, school board members, educational advocacy groups, and other people who need financial information about public education a comprehensive, easy-to-understand primer on the annual financial reports issued by school districts. The User Guide includes major new reporting requirements issued by the GASB since the publication of the original guide in 2000, in areas that include retiree health insurance and fund balance. The guide includes:
- More than 50 annotated examples of school district financial statements, notes, and schedules
- A storyline designed to help the reader understand the concepts
- An introduction to basic financial ratios used to analyze school district finances
- Helpful boxes and sidebars further exploring issues raised in the text
- An overview of school district accounting and financial reporting
- An exhaustive glossary of terms.
What You Should Know about Your School District’s Finances: A Guide to Financial Statements, 2nd edition, can be ordered for $14.95 plus shipping by visiting www.gasb.org/store, or by calling the GASB Order Department at (800) 748-0659.
Additional guides will be available in the coming months, including:
- What You Should Know about the Finances of Your Business-Type Activities is a new guide devoted to the unique features of financial reporting by the activities that governments operate similar to businesses by charging fees in return for service, such as public utilities, airports, public hospitals, and public colleges and universities.
- An Analyst’s Guide to Government Financial Statements, 2nd edition, is the most comprehensive of the user guides and is written for experienced and frequent users of governmental financial statements. The guide covers the information in all of the major notes and supporting schedules in an annual financial report and explores basic analytical techniques for using that information to assess economic condition, financial position, liquidity, solvency, fiscal capacity, and risk exposure in a state or local government report.
About the Governmental Accounting Standards Board
The GASB is the independent, not-for-profit organization formed in 1984 that establishes and improves financial accounting and reporting standards for state and local governments. Its seven members are drawn from the Board’s diverse constituency, including preparers and auditors of government financial statements, users of those statements, and members of the academic community. More information about the GASB can be found at its website, www.gasb.org.