Recently the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools (“Board”) established the Financial Framework Subcommittee (“Subcommittee”). As part of its deliberations, the Subcommittee will consider data and lessons learned from the FY19-FY22 audit cycles and stakeholder feedback. Ultimately, the Subcommittee will provide a recommendation to the full Board regarding changes to the framework’s measures.

The next Financial Subcommittee meeting will be on December 1, 2023 at 9:00am.

The Subcommittee has directed Board staff to solicit stakeholder feedback on certain items discussed at its October 31st and November 8th meetings. All stakeholder feedback submitted by noon on Tuesday, November 21, 2023 using this Google Form will be considered by the Subcommittee on December 1st or at a Subcommittee meeting scheduled at a later date. The Subcommittee would greatly appreciate your feedback.

Based on procedures in place when the initial financial framework was first implemented in 2012, Board staff has considered the total change in net assets. Since implementing the current framework, Board staff has talked with various individuals regarding the appropriateness of considering donor restrictions. 

At its November 8, 2023 meeting, the Subcommittee voted to recommend the financial framework consider the change in net assets without donor restrictions instead of the current practice of using the total change in net assets. Further, the Subcommittee recommended that the Board implement this change, for those charter holders that would be positively affected, with Board staff’s review of the fiscal year 2023 audits; this would not affect schools that are negatively impacted by this change for fiscal year 2023. The Subcommittee took this action to provide for the opportunity to solicit public comment from charter holders that the full Board could consider at the December 14, 2023 meeting and if, after considering the public comment, the change is approved by the full Board, to allow Board staff to gather data on how this change impacted performance based on the fiscal year 2023 audits. 

You may access the information presented to the Subcommittee here. Please note that this document inadvertently uses “total net assets” instead of “total change in net assets” and “net assets without donor restrictions” instead of “change in net assets without donor restrictions.”

The window for the first opportunity for public comment will be open November 13, 2023 – December 4, 2023.

All public comment received by December 4, 2023 using this Google form will be presented to the Board and members of the public will have an additional opportunity to provide comment to the Board at the meeting during which the Board considers this possible change to the financial framework.

Charter Representatives,



Unless granted a single audit extension through the Board’s engagement letter process, complete fiscal year 2023 audits must be uploaded through ASBCS Online by your audit firm no later than 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, November 15, 2023. For the audit firm to be able to upload your FY2023 audit through ASBCS Online, our office must have approved an engagement letter with the audit firm. Charter holders that do not timely submit their fiscal year 2023 financial statement audits will be placed on the Board’s Monday, November 20, 2023 agenda for further consideration and possible Board action. Charter holders placed on the November 20^th agenda for failure to timely submit their audits will be notified via an email sent through ASBCS Online on Thursday, November 16.

Due to the high volume of audits expected to be received between November 13 and November 15, it may take four business hours or longer for Board staff to process audits submitted during this period. All charter representatives will receive an email, sent through ASBCS Online, notifying them if the submitted audit is complete. In addition to being sent to your inbox, this email is accessible through the charter representative portal. After you log in, click on the “Email Logs” tile on the homepage and look for the email with a subject of “Complete 2023 Audit Received” or “Incomplete 2023 Audit Received.”

If you have any questions, please contact Andrea at Andrea.Leder@asbcs.az.gov or at (602) 621-6696.