Summary

Summary of Attestation Examination

The Washington County District School Board 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 Washington County School Program (WCSP) at Dozier, for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008.

Noncompliance related to FTE resulted in one finding.  The resulting audit adjustments to the District's reported, unweighted FTE for WCSP at Dozier totaled to a zero, but have a potential impact on weighted FTE of a negative .2025. 

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 estimated by multiplying the net weighted FTE audit adjustment by the base student allocation amount.  For the Washington County District School Board, the estimated gross dollar effect of our FTE audit adjustments is a negative $843 (negative .2025 times $4,163.47).

The ultimate resolution of our FTE audit adjustments and the computation of their financial impact is the responsibility of DOE.

School District of Washington County

The District was established pursuant to Section 1001.30, Florida Statutes, to provide public educational services for the residents of Washington County.  Those services are provided primarily to students attending kindergarten through high school, but also to adults seeking vocational-type training.  The District is part of the State system of public education under the general direction and control of the State Board of Education.  The geographic boundaries of the District are those of Washington County.  The governing body of the District is the District School Board, which is composed of five elected members.  The executive officer of the Board is the elected Superintendent of Schools.  The Washington County School Program (WCSP) at Dozier operates an alternative educational facility for youthful offenders, under a grant agreement between the Washington County School Board and the Department of Education.  The facility includes two educational centers:  Dozier II and Dozier Training School for Boys.  For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008, the District reported 471.0941 unweighted FTE for WCSP at Dozier, and received approximately $3.9 million in State funding for those FTE.  WCSP at Dozier is funded under FEFP similar to a school district.

Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP)

Florida school districts receive State funding through 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).

Management's response to the audit findings is included in the audit report as Exhibit A.