New GASB Reporting Standards Charter Schools Should Have on Their Radar

Florida charter schools report under the Financial and Program Cost Accounting and Reporting for Florida Schools manual, known to nearly everyone in the field as the Redbook. That framework sits on top of standards set by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, and GASB has been active lately.

A cluster of recent statements is relevant to governmental and charter-school reporting: GASB Statement No. 103 revises pieces of the financial reporting model itself, Statement No. 104 changes how capital assets are disclosed, and Statement No. 105 addresses subsequent events reporting. Each is at a different stage of becoming effective, and continuing education courses aimed at governmental accountants have been built around exactly this cluster of updates this year.

For a charter school board, the practical question is not which GASB number applies in the abstract, but how these changes flow into the annual unaudited financial report, the cost report, and the conversation with your external auditor. A reporting model revision in particular can touch the structure of statements your board reviews every month, not just the year-end audit package.

This is not a call to panic, it is a call to ask early. If your current accountant has not walked your board through which of these standards affects your school's reporting cycle and when, that is a conversation worth having before your next audit, not during it. Our firm has spent thirty-one years handling exactly this kind of governmental and charter-school reporting, and staying ahead of standards changes like these is part of the job.