Summary

Summary of Attestation Examination

Except for instances of material noncompliance involving teachers, and the reporting of full-time equivalent (FTE) students and maintenance of supporting timecards for students in Career Education OJT, as discussed below, the Florida State University School complied, in all material respects, with State requirements regarding the determination and reporting of full-time equivalent (FTE) students under the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2006.

• Seven of the 12 teachers in our sample did not meet State requirements governing certification; approval of out-of-field teacher assignments; notification of parents regarding out-of-field teachers, or the earning of required in-service training points in ESOL strategies.

• The FTE for each of the eight students in our Career Education OJT sample was reported incorrectly and the supporting timecards for four of the eight students were missing and could not be located.

Total instances of noncompliance related to FTE resulted in seven finding.  The resulting audit adjustments totaled to a negative .6652 unweighted FTE, and have a potential impact of a negative 1.8163 weighted FTE.

Weighted FTE adjustments are presented in our report for illustrative purposes only.  They do not take special program caps and allocation factors into account and are not intended to indicate the weighted FTE used to compute the dollar value of audit adjustments, which is the responsibility of the Department of Education (DOE).  However, the gross dollar effect of our FTE audit adjustments may be roughly estimated by multiplying the net weighted FTE audit adjustment by the base student allocation amount.  For the Florida State University School, the gross dollar effect is a negative $6,797 (negative 1.8163 times $3,742.42).

Florida State University School

The Florida State University School was established pursuant to Section 1002.32, Florida Statutes, as a developmental research school located in Tallahassee, Florida, and is affiliated with the Florida State University’s College of Education.  The Statute specifies that developmental research schools are to provide “a vehicle for the conduct of research, demonstration, and evaluation regarding management, teaching, and learning,” and also states that “the primary goal of a lab school is to enhance instruction and research in [mathematics, science, computer science, and foreign languages] by using resources available in a state university campus, while also providing an education in nonspecialized subjects.”

Effective July 1, 2000, the School has operated as a charter school under the provisions of Section 1002.33, Florida Statutes, and was separately incorporated as the Florida State University Schools, Inc.  Under the provisions of Section 1002.33(5)(a)2., Florida Statutes, the School’s sponsor is Florida State University. 

The Florida State University School offers instruction in Basic education, Exceptional education, Career Education 9-12, and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), and serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade.  The School reported 1,583.27 unweighted full-time equivalent (FTE) students, and received approximately $8.2 million in State funding under the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP) for those FTE.  The primary sources of funding for the School are funds from the FEFP.

Florida Education Finance Program

Florida school districts and developmental research schools receive State funding through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP), which was established by the Florida Legislature in 1973.  It is the intent of the law "to guarantee to each student in the Florida public school system the availability of programs and services appropriate to his educational needs which are substantially equal to those available to any similar student notwithstanding geographic differences and varying local economic factors."  To provide equalization of educational opportunity in Florida, the FEFP formula recognizes (1) varying local property tax bases, (2) varying program cost factors, (3) district cost differentials, and (4) differences in per student cost for equivalent educational programs due to sparsity and dispersion of student population.  The funding provided by FEFP is based upon the numbers of individual students participating in particular educational programs.  A numerical value is assigned to each student according to the student's hours and days of attendance in those programs.  The individual student thus becomes equated to a numerical value known as an unweighted FTE (full-time equivalent student).  For example, one student would be reported as one FTE if the student was enrolled in six classes per day at 50 minutes per class for the full 180-day school year (i.e., six classes at 50 minutes each per day is five hours of class a day or 25 hours per week, which equals one FTE). 

The Superintendent's written response to the audit findings is included in the audit report on the Auditor General Web site.