Fiscal Accountability in Urban Schools and School Districts

Fiscal accountability for school districts helps assure that money is both accounted for properly and that the budget is balanced—i.e., it ensures that spending on individual line items does not exceed the budget for that line item and that revenues and expenditures are tracked. As a result, accounting systems in school districts offer information on spending by object (type of expenditure, such as teacher salaries, all personnel benefits, instructional materials, etc.), function (general areas, such as instruction, instructional support, administration, operations and maintenance), and in some cases program (elementary instruction, middle schools, special education).