Ed-Data

County offices of education use a system called fund accounting to record all their revenues and expenditures. Their money must be placed in one of many prescribed or permissible funds. Each fund has revenues, expenditures, and a fund balance.

The various funds fall into three broad categories: governmental, proprietary and fiduciary. Governmental funds account for activities, typically tax-supported, that include the education of pupils, operation of food service and child development programs, construction and maintenance of school facilities, and repayment of long-term debt. Within the governmental fund category all counties have a County School Service Fund that captures most of the county's operations. It is the largest fund--what most people think of as “the budget.” The other funds, which range from cafeterias to construction, often have significant restrictions about how the money may be used. Counties vary in which funds they have, especially in the proprietary and fiduciary categories.

Proprietary funds cover businesslike activities when a fee is charged to external users or to other organizational units of the county office; these funds are generally intended to be self-supporting. Fiduciary funds account for assets held in a trustee or agency capacity, such as retiree benefits; they cannot be used to support the county's own programs.

This summary includes the funds the state requires counties to report. Some counties maintain fiduciary Agency funds which account for resources that are set aside and then paid to the appropriate entity. An example is the Warrant/Pass-Through Fund for employee taxes, credit union, etc. These optional Agency funds do not have to be reported to the California Department of Education, but they are part of the county's audited financial statement.

Note: Districts and county offices report their revenues and expenditures to the California Department of Education (CDE) prior to the completion of their annual audit. Every effort is made by the CDE to catch errors or misinterpretations. However, the unaudited information is not changed after it has been certified and released by CDE. Therefore, this report may include some uncorrected data.