Pub. 4 2014-2015 Issue 1

15 All I Really Need to Know… L et me preface my article, I am not a politician nor have I ever aspired to be one. I am not a CPA, although my business degree (with an emphasis in finance) has continued my interest in numbers. Born and raised in L.A., trans- planted to Utah because of the lure of BYU, I consider myself an average guy who knows a “few” things about charter schools. I have been the Business Manager of Freedom Preparatory Academy for nearly nine years and the CFO for three years before that. Freedom Pre- paratory began in a rented warehouse, grades K-5 with 350 students. Today, we have grown to two campuses and over 1000 students in grades K-11. Many of you are thinking - yep, been there, done that! I love being in the education field so much that a few years ago I went back to school and earned my Mas- ter's Degree in Education. Although my most successful schooling is from the school of hard knocks, my sur- vival consists of joking around, with a side of sarcasm. This helps dull the pain of state and federal rules, regula- tions, reports, and deadlines. Which leads me to writing this article. I am a firm believer that there is no one right way to run charter schools. However, I have picked up a few tricks along the way that I would like to share. I’d like to focus on account- ing software and health insurance benefits. In streamlining these two areas, my life is much easier because I don’t have to spend extra time in the popular accounting software of today, manipulating it in an attempt to get it to do what I need it to do. This also keeps the employees happy with great benefits! Streamlining these two areas alone, has freed my time up allowing me to also be an assistant director in our elementary school. I believe the author Robert Fulgham summed up life in his book titled “All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten.” Many of the principles he taught can be benefi- cial to us as business managers in our own charter schools. For example: Share Everything: As I indicated before, I believe there is no “one way” or “right way” to run the busi- ness side of a charter school. There are variations on who manages the finances, whether it is a management company or business manager as an employee of the school. True, the state and federal governments have outlined, pretty heavily, where, when, and how we are supposed to put the debit and credits, as well as a litany of other standards and audits, but your charter school and my charter school, in and of itself, is unique from any other public schools in the state. Freedom Prep has found a few tips along our 12 year journey that has enabled us to save money, lessen audit findings and make uploading informa- tion to the transparency website from something that used to take several hours, to something that now takes BY CHRISTOPHER S. HELVEY, M.ED . ASSISTANT DIRECTOR/BUSINESS MANAGER 2014 BUSINESS MANAGER OF THE YEAR CONTINUED ON PAGE 16