Roanoke City Council members are considering whether to merge the city and school district’s finance systems in a bid for more oversight.
For years the Roanoke City Public Schools operated with significant financial autonomy.
It had a funding formula, approved by the City Council and the School Board, which gave 40 percent of local tax money to the schools each year. And, in another key part of the equation, it used its own in-house accounting system instead of the city’s. The city uses Oracle. The school uses Keystone, investing its own money and facing little questioning by the council or the city administration.
Now, council members are considering whether to merge those two systems in a bid for more oversight over school spending…