5408 SW 13th Street Gainesville, FL 32608 352-373-5223
"Academic Excellence Enhanced by the Arts"
Our funding sources include:
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State FEFP Funding |
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State Capitol Outlay Funding |
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Federal Title I Funding |
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Donations |
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Fundraising |
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Various Grants and Mini-Grants |
Expressions has continued to successfully meet the financial challenges associated with a growing school; challenges such as remodeling, curriculum acquisition, and trying to offer competitive staff salaries and benefits. Initially, we benefited from first and second year federal Start-Up grants, as well as state funds. Parents and other community members supported our fundraising efforts to ensure that we could provide the extras needed to present an arts enhanced curriculum. We advise new schools to begin community fundraising events early on in order to provide for curriculum enhancement.
This school has made use of appropriate "out-sourcing" for portions of our financial management needs. Our staff, like many other charter schools, is small. Most of our staff members have more expertise in education than in business. We researched and networked to find individuals who were familiar with charter schools and their unique needs, and who were also willing to stay informed concerning changing requirements and legislation.
We use the services of a CPA to file our corporate reports, balance our accounts, compile and submit monthly reports to our district, and to prepare our records for the yearly independent financial audit. Both our CPA and the auditor have many other charter schools as clients, so they understand our unique position among public schools. In addition, we use an employee leasing agency for personnel records, payroll, benefits, payroll taxes, and worker's compensation fees. We communicate with our specialists at least bi-weekly, and oversee their actions by reviewing each monthly CPA report and bi-weekly payroll sheet.
We have found these out-sourced services to be a valuable asset to the smooth functioning of our school. Initially, we thought we would only use these services while funding for them was available through the Start-Up grants. When we assessed the time and personnel resources we would need to in order to take over these functions, it became clear that these resources probably even save us money and allow us to focus more on our educational goals.
There are now financial and personnel agencies which have departments specializing in charter schools. These were not available to us in 1999. We would advise new schools to seek these professionals for their assistance with school financial accountability.