This NN4DA Update includes:
- Information on the importance financial oversight, including how district finance experts and authorizing staff can collaborate, and why strong financial oversight is even more important in times of declining enrollment; and
- A link to a video of the NN4DA Working Group on AI and Technology’s recent meeting with the team at Quality School Review.AI. The video captures the demo, as authorizers explored their approach and its reports. This AI-focused working group meets on the 2nd Thursday of each month, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm, MDT. For information on upcoming meetings and how to join, reach out to the hosts, Marianne Blair or Alex Medler. Join us for demos from other providers as well as discussions of all things AI and tech in authorizing.
Alex
Financial Metrics, Annual Charter Reviews, and Declining Enrollment
This summer, I have been thinking a lot about how schools and districts with declining enrollment struggle.
In both charters and districts, shrinking enrollment leads to either a slow erosion of quality or a period of denial, with little change in staffing or programming, followed by a major crisis. Eventually, if school quality gradually declines, kids can suffer for years, and major changes are still necessary. Alternatively, when a long-delayed crisis finally hits, bankrupt charters can close mid-year, while districts can erupt into political chaos. Either way, hard choices eventually become inevitable, leading to charter closure or years of district acrimony and dysfunction.
As more communities wrestle with severe declines in enrollment, district authorizing staff, district financial experts, and school and district leaders could all learn from one another.
Strong authorizers are good at tracking and addressing a slow erosion of school quality. Larger, well-run districts have lessons to share on assessing financial health and budgeting transparently. Not all authorizing shops and district finance offices have these strengths, of course, but the best of each excels at a distinct function that is extremely useful in an environment of declining enrollment. We should learn from these exemplars to help charters and districts through our shared enrollment challenge.
Strengths of Districts’ Authorizing
and Financial Offices
Charter authorizers have developed systems to produce annual reports for each charter they oversee. Strong authorizers can assess and track a slow erosion of school quality and program fidelity. They discuss what they find publicly with charter leaders annually. No one is surprised, and people can act before a crisis emerges.
Districts could adopt this approach more broadly, especially for their own schools — and they shouldn’t forget the public and transparent bits. A district’s authorizing staff may have a lot to share on how to do this well. If districts and parents learned how declining enrollment undermines school quality and the student experience in district schools over time, they might support district leaders who take the necessary steps sooner, like closing under-enrolled schools.
Most school districts choose to, or are forced by state policy, to engage in transparent and public budgeting processes. Medium to large districts generally have financial staff with expertise that can inform thoughtful budgeting by boards and district leaders.
Too often, charter-authorizing offices in districts are isolated from this financial expertise, and charter-specific financial metrics are available, yet many district authorizers don’t use them. For charter schools in nested structures or networks, untangling any single school’s financial health can be technically challenging. Complicating matters, some charters shirk their responsibility to budget public dollars in public.
Integrating Authorizing and Financial Expertise
District authorizers should integrate their financial expertise into their authorizing work. They should use appropriate charter-specific tools to publicly assess charters’ financial health. And they should discuss what they find with their charters. District financial expertise is increasingly important to charter authorizers, as declining enrollment can lead to fatal financial problems in charter schools. District expertise in assessing school quality and in discussing results with stakeholders is an authorizing skill set that districts can apply to their own declining enrollment.
Districts should support this cross-silo sharing between experts in authorizing and finance. NN4DA state partners have plenty of resources to help districts improve their financial oversight. The CACSA, CCAP, FACSA, and WRCCS resource libraries all have good materials on the topic, and meetings in each state often address these issues in detail. There are also resources on annual reports and how to assess school quality and program fidelity. Reach out to your state partner for help and advice.
If you are interested in more details on how declining enrollment unfolds in schools and districts, and the strengths and weaknesses of district authorizing staff and district financial experts in addressing these challenges, you can read more here.
AI Powered School Quality Reviews Demo
The NN4DA Working Group on AI and Technology recently met with the team from School Quality Review AI to see a demonstration of their platform and to discuss its potential use by authorizers as well as schools. A video of that meeting is available here.
Their product is school facing and designed to help produce a report on the quality of the school based on an extensive document review. The school uploads documents, and then the AI tool assesses that body of evidence against a set of more than 85 indicators covering a wide range of domains typically used by strong authorizers. Their tool produces final reports with narrative descriptions of the school’s performance against each indicator, quantitative dashboards, as well as links to the specific document and evidence used to inform that evaluation.
The indicators are based on the team’s previous experience conducting quality reviews for various authorizers around the country, and while the indicators are not state- or authorizer-specific, they do address the areas typically incorporated in authorizers’ desk audits of charter schools that are conducted as part of the renewal process for annual reports.
School Quality Review.AI is a relatively new platform in the charter space, and the firm’s leaders, Adam Aberman, and Josh Cook, are eager to work with charter schools and authorizers as development partners.
This NN4DA Working Group meets monthly on the second Thursday of the month, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm, MDT. Reach out to Marianne Blair or Alex Medler for more information and to register for these calls.
NN4DA Annual Summit
Hold the Dates!
October 26 and 27, 2026
Nashville, TN
NN4DA is convening the NN4DA Annual Summit on October 26-27, in Nashville, TN. Hold the dates! Join us as we meet with all our state partners to discuss our shared work and important topics for district authorizers. Our Annual Summit is held in conjunction with NACSA’s annual meeting and addresses a mix of ways we can support each other and substantive issues affecting district authorizers.