On the last Friday of every month, hosts Jay Staley and Matt Bubness invite you to discover how you can strengthen your school operations. With a rotating panel of guests, this webinar series will explore a timely new topic each month, sharing best practices and resources to help support your school district.
October 2024 Telling your school district's financial story  School district funding and financing can seem like rocket science, making it even more challenging to communicate these complexities to district stakeholders.  Join Jay Staley, Matt Bubness and special guest speaker Scott Gooding from Big Walnut Local Schools, OH as they discuss strategies to communicate financial information, engage your leadership team, board and community and understand the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of financial decisions. Insights from current finance leaders on best practices and successful methods will be shared.  Video
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Baker Tilly hosted our annual not-for-profit governance and fiscal workshop this past June, with one of our most attended sessions focused on cybersecurity and related fraud risks. Our presenters, Joe Shusko and Bernard Regan, delivered compelling examples, data and innovative ideas to assist not-for-profit (NFP) organizations in their defense against these types of crimes. If you missed the workshop or the session, you can view our on-demand recordings from each day. The top five notable lessons learned discussed from the session are below.  Connect with us for more information on our session or to discuss solutions tailored to your organization. Takeaway 1: Be prepared NFPs should create a detailed plan to be prepared in the event of a cyber-attack. Cyber-attacks are quick – and scary. Operating in these situations is stressful and most likely, organizations are unable to access their systems. Should your organization suffer an attack, having a plan (offline!) with contact information, steps, insurance policies and other critical information will be necessary. Once you have established a plan, don’t just leave it on the shelf, but periodically practice the plan to ensure familiarity, work out the kinks and update it as necessary. Doing an annual “table-top” exercise puts the plan in practice and is a proactive and productive way to ensure preparedness. Look into information sources such as cisa.gov for support you can tap into when developing your plan. Takeaway 2: Be informed Not-for-profit organizations need to be well-informed and diligently aware of current types of cybercrime being committed. With advancing technology and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), yesterday’s crimes are often irrelevant and have been replaced.  Recommended resources to stay abreast of trends include: The Register: Enterprise Technology News and Analysis Dark Reading | Security | Protect The Business Cybersecurity - Baker Tilly Cyber Security Blog | SANS Institute Krebs on Security – In-depth security news and investigation Subscribe for alerts on cisa.gov NIST Small Business Cybersecurity Corner Takeaway 3: Foster a positive cybersecurity education culture It’s critical to create a positive education culture for employees where they feel safe to report items that look suspicious or unusual and potential errors can be made. In most cyber incidents, human error is the leading cause of a breach. Cybersecurity should be approached as a business challenge, not just an IT challenge.  Frequent communication with the workforce on emerging trends, cyber hygiene and best practices should be put in place. Employees should be encouraged to report suspicious activity. There should be no consequences for bringing suspicious activity to the wider security team’s attention. Report everything within reason and do not discourage individuals from using their own best judgment for reporting. If something looks odd or doesn’t seem right, then report it. Your workforce will be best enabled and empowered to report suspicious activities if they are informed with the right level of security awareness. Solutions like Knowbe4 or Mimecast provide engaging continuous training modules, or you can explore a host of low-cost or free materials like those listed on the NIST website. Takeaway 4: Test plans No organization is isolated or completely protected from attacks. It can be helpful to have a testing cadence to measure an organization’s vulnerability, especially in changing times. Periodic vulnerability assessments are essential to understand what potential attacks an organization could be subject to. Additionally, gathering threat intelligence helps an organization stay current and familiar with the current threat landscape, allowing tailored defenses to protect against emerging threats. Finally, test your protective measures and incident response plan periodically through activities like tabletop exercises and penetration testing. Remember that executing your incident response plan will always be more difficult during an actual attack so exercising it frequently builds familiarity and gives you an opportunity to refine and enhance the plan based on the current threat landscape.   Takeaway 5: Understand the difference between cybercrime and fraud Fraud and cybercrime are not always the same. Fraud can be intertwined in cybercrime or harder to detect in a cyber-based environment. Fraud is often viewed as a disturbance in the financial process, either internally (within an organization) or externally. Fraudulent activities such as fictitious vendors, a redirection of funds or simple theft can be performed by employees, vendors, threat actors or a combination of all three. Often, these individuals will work within a close group with the intent of acquiring funds for fraudulent means. This is done by employees or vendors who, due to their access to the organization’s internal systems, are able to modify system settings and manipulate data such as account details, routing or other financial information. Cybercrime routinely involves schemes like business email compromise and the request for the diversion of funds. These activities don’t always require any unauthorized access to a secure network and are often done by performing social media research or vendor management analysis. This is carried out by a threat actor requesting the money be put into a new account for audit or other fictitious reasons and therefore, by the time it is discovered, the money has been withdrawn and disappeared. This situation also encroaches on cybercrime linked to ransomware or malware attacks where demands are made for the return of data, or to provide a decryption key to access the encrypted data. This is frequently performed via digital currency and is more challenging to trace. Baker Tilly can help Baker Tilly’s cybersecurity specialists can offer tailored solutions to your not-for-profit organization to assist with preventing and detecting cybercrime and fraud.  Connect with our team today to learn more.

Takeaways from our 2024 not-for-profit workshop on cybercrime and how your organization can protect itself from fraud and cyber-attacks.

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Arizona schools and the state legislature have been in the news recently over the aggregate expenditure limit, but what does that really mean? To fully understand we must go back to 1980, when Arizona voters passed a measure that limits how much Arizona schools (K-12) can spend within a school year. This became known as the aggregate expenditure limit. However, we must also understand that this limit fluctuates each year depending on enrollment and inflation, and that most school funds are counted towards this limit, but federal monies are excluded. It is also important to note that charter schools are not included in this spending limit since they are relatively new to Arizona and were not around when this measure was passed in 1980. For many years this was not at the forefront of the news because it did not affect schools as greatly as it could today. A few reasons this is in the news today is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most schools in the state of Arizona have seen a decrease in their enrollment since the pandemic began. As previously noted, enrollment is a factor in determining the aggregate expenditure limit. Another issue for schools is Proposition 301 funding. This was passed by voters in 2000 to levy a six-tenths of a cent sales tax to support education. This was set to expire in 2020, but instead was extended in 2018 by the governor and the legislature. However, in 2002 voters passed Proposition 104 to exclude Proposition 301 funding form being included in the aggregate expenditure limit calculation. Unfortunately, when Proposition 301 was extended in 2018, a Proposition 104 extension was not included. Since Proposition 301 generates $600 million in funding, these monies are now included in the 2022 aggregate expenditure limit. Fortunately for Arizona schools, legislature still has the power to allow schools to exceed the aggregate expenditure limit for the current school year. This can be done one year a time, with a two-thirds vote needed to pass. Legislature has until no later than March 1, 2022 to pass this allowance for the current year. By doing so, Arizona schools would have the authority to spend monies they already have. In total Arizona schools have about $1.1 billion in jeopardy for 2022. If schools are unable to spend these monies it would be difficult to avoid lay-offs and cuts to programs or services provided to students. While the legislature has the power to help in 2022, a longer-term solution should be considered and introduced into legislature in the near future. For more information on this topic, or to learn how Baker Tilly specialists can help, contact our team.

Arizona schools and the state legislature have been in the news recently over the aggregate expenditure limit. Here&#039;s what that means.

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Baker Tilly proudly serves more than 145 charter and independent schools throughout the United States and has fortified our position as the largest audit and tax service provider for the charter school industry in California. With over 15 years of experience servicing the education sector, our skilled staff of professionals bring a wealth of experience to provide our clients with important value-added services.

Charter schools are required to have an annual independent fiscal audit that is performed in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. We work closely with the State Controller’s Office and the California Department of Education to ensure that audit issues are effectively and appropriately addressed. We also confer with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) to help charter schools handle emerging accounting issues.

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With a deep understanding of the issues not-for-profit organizations face, and the creativity and humanity required to thrive in your world, Baker Tilly professionals bring you reliable solutions that deliver measurable value to your organization and those you serve.

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Brenda Bock is a principal in Baker Tilly’s San Diego office.

Jim is an audit principal based in our San Diego, California office and has more than 30 years of public accounting experience.

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What is the aggregate expenditure limit?

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