Lake Travis school district gets high marks for financial accountability
The Lake Travis school district has received a financial grade of 98 out of 100 for the second year in a row from the state.
A School Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas, or FIRST, is a financial accountability rating developed by the Texas Education Agency to hold schools accountable for the quality of their financial management and to help them improve. According to the TEA's website, the goal of the rating system is to encourage “schools to better manage their financial resources to provide the maximum allocation possible for direct instructional purposes.”
School districts receive ratings based on 20 indicators, three of which were not taken into consideration for this year due to COVID-19, said Pam Sanchez, Lake Travis' assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction.
Lake Travis received full points for all of the graded indicators, with the exception of indicator 13, where it received an 8 out of 10. The indicator looks at student attendance numbers in ratio to administration, Sanchez said. In 2018 to 2019, Sanchez said, Lake Travis received a perfect rating for this measure. However, the recent growth in students put the district’s attendance numbers over 10,000 students, and with roughly the same number of staff, the district did not receive the full rating, Sanchez said.
“We went over that (10,000 student) threshold, and being a smaller size for this threshold, we still have our number of administrative staff members to run our campuses and the district,” Sanchez said. “Therefore, we do not quite meet the ratio that would give us the full points.”
The school district received a perfect rating for all other indicators, such as making bond payments on time, and for making timely payments to the Teachers Retirement System, the Texas Workforce Commission, the IRS and other government agencies. Indicator 6 measures whether the district has a fund balance to operate for at least 75 days and Lake Travis has enough funds to operate for at least 125 days as of Wednesday’s school board meeting announcing the results, Sanchez said.
“It’s great to see an outside report that includes this third-party independent audit and a lot of indicators that the state puts a priority on,” said Trustee Lauren White. “To see that when you dig down deep, we’re doing a very good job.”
The district received a rating of A, or “superior achievement,” according to the report listed on the TEA’s website. Find the full report and the rest of the indicators the district was graded on the TEA's website.
The beginning of the meeting consisted of a special recognition for the 64 students from Lake Travis High School who qualified for the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program.
“These students enter the program by taking the Preliminary SAT and then the National Merit Scholarship qualifying test as high school sophomores and juniors,” said a representative from the high school. “They were chosen from more than 1.5 million program entrants and represent less than 1% of each state’s high school seniors.”
Eight National Merit semifinalists, 26 commended scholars and 30 National Hispanic scholars from Lake Travis High School were recognized at Wednesday’s meeting.
The eight National Merit semifinalists are Tyler Harrison, William lannitelll, Bogna Kaminska, Jackson Lleb, Ellzabeth Sewell, Meghana Singireddy, Siddharth Sreenlvasan and Andrew Yun.
The 26 commended scholars are Rory Adl, Valeria Alexeykina, David Barba, Emmerson Bergstrom, Dax Debner, Ria DeSouza, Prishita Durga, Brooke Ellisor, Isaac George, Lauren Hebel, Nausheen Hossaln, Sonika Klehler, Simon Knuff, Brady Malone, Andrew Matthew, Hanna Ngo, Van Nguyen, Robert Paine, Luke Peters, Aman Reddy, Kathryn Richter, Samuel Rincon, Kyra Sampson, Annabella Smith, Caleb Simpson and Coco Zhou.
The 30 National Hispanic scholars are Alissa Aldrich, Orlana Alves Ferreira-Dias, Alejandro Baraona, Jessica Barrero, Hector Beltran Garcia, Brandon Berens, Christian Cotroneo, Elena Davis, Nicholas De La Rosa, Mekenna Flores, Adrianna Gaddy, Julian Garcia, Luis Higareda, Maddisun Lee, Brendan Lucero, Daniel Magana Camargo, Valeria Malave, Jesus Martinez Hernandez, Ana Millan, Mia Moorad, Amando Peña, Alexandra Rodriguez, Alexis Romero, Amy Salas, Alexander Sica, Katya Solis, Pitchford Tucker, Ana Alicia Urista, Melia Zands and Travis Zinzer.
Lake Travis ISD’s next school board meeting will be at 6 p.m. Nov. 16 in the Live Oak Room at the Educational Development Center, 607 RM 620.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Lake Travis school district gets high marks for financial accountability
