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Introduction

This report presents data from the School District Finance Survey (F-33) of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system for school year (SY) 2010–11, fiscal year 2011 (FY 11). The F-33 survey is a school district-level financial survey that consists of data submitted annually to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau (Census Bureau) by state education agencies (SEAs) in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The purpose of this report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information; therefore, the selected findings chosen for this report demonstrate the range of information available when using the F-33 component of CCD. The selected findings do not represent a complete review of all observed differences in the data and are not meant to emphasize any particular issue.

This First Look report presents findings on public elementary and secondary (PK–12) education revenues and expenditures at the local education agency (LEA) level using FY 11 provisional data from the F-33 survey of the CCD survey system. This report provides users with an opportunity to access provisional F-33 data that have been reviewed, edited, and imputed. Final data, including revisions to the provisional data submitted by the SEAs after the close of data collection, will be available during the following collection year.

Commencing with FY 12 data, NCES will release preliminary F-33 data in an effort to provide earlier access to the data. The preliminary data will be subject to one round of data review and editing. The release of preliminary data will be followed by a release of provisional data. The provisional data will be an update to the previously released preliminary data, and subject to a more extensive review and editing process. Revisions submitted after the provisional data file is locked will be incorporated in the final file for each fiscal year. Final data files will be released at the time of the release of preliminary data for the following year.

The F-33 survey is part of the CCD survey system that annually collects fiscal and nonfiscal data from SEAs. The Governments Division of the Census Bureau cosponsors the F-33 survey with NCES and conducts the data collection. All 50 states and the District of Columbia provided data for FY 11. For the F-33 survey, NCES requests that SEAs report all school district-level financial transactions associated with revenues by source, expenditures by function and object, indebtedness, and assets. This includes revenues from federal, state, and local sources and expenditures in categories such as instruction (and instruction-related activities), student support services, administration, operation, capital outlay, and debt services. The SEAs submit data in conformance with Financial Accounting for Local and State School Systems: 2009 Edition (Allison, Honegger, and Johnson 2009), the NCES handbook that provides guidance to SEAs and LEAs in establishing and maintaining their school financial accounting systems.

SEAs report financial data for a variety of types of LEAs. The F-33 data file used to create this report includes regular school districts, independent charter school districts, as well as a substantial number of administrative and operating LEAs that are unlike typical school districts (e.g., education service agencies that provide specialized education services for regular school districts).1 In SY 2010–2011 (FY 11), there were a total of 18,297 school districts on the F-33 file in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Finance data were reported for 17,562 or 96.0 percent of school districts on the F-33 file.

Tables 1, 5, and 7 include all LEAs reported in the F-33 file-including districts that administer only vocational and special education schools and independent charter schools. Table 7 includes the regular noncharter school districts data with the independent charter school districts data.

Table 4 presents the revenues and current expenditures of the 100 largest school districts in order of their student enrollment, as reported in the F-33 file.

Tables 2, 3, and 6 in this report include only regular2 school districts reported by SEAs with student counts greater than zero and listed in both the FY 11 F-33 file and SY 2010–2011 CCD LEA Universe Survey file; 80.8 percent of all school districts met these criteria.

Please see Appendix A: Methodology and Technical Notes for more information about survey content and methodology. Appendix B is a glossary of key CCD terms used in this report. More information about CCD surveys and products is available at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd.

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1 In this report, regular school districts exclude districts that administer only vocational and special education schools and independent charter schools. Education service agencies and other agencies that do not operate schools are also excluded from regular school districts in this report. Regular school districts may operate charter schools in addition to noncharter schools. Independent charter school districts operate only charter schools. The definitions of regular school districts, independent charter school districts, and charter schools can be found in Appendix B: Common Core of Data Glossary.
2 Regular in this context means all elementary and secondary school districts reporting membership, matching the CCD nonfiscal LEA Universe Survey, and excluding independent charter school districts. Elementary and secondary school districts are defined by the F-33 school level code "01" (elementary school system only), "02" (secondary system only), and "03" (elementary/secondary school system).