Friends Academy

“The board of trustees receive an electronic form of the final form 990 before it is filed with the irs. In order to protect the confidentiality of the donors, schedule b is not provided to the trustees. There are no further limitations of the trustees' review. The trustees review the information independently and are asked to direct any questions to the head of the school and director of finance. The form 990 is discussed at a board meeting.”

“The academy monitors and enforces a conflict of interest policy. The policy clearly identifies areas of potential conflict, review procedures, and disclosure responsibilities. The policy is reviewed annually and each trustee, officer and employee is required to sign an annual conflict of interest disclosure form. The policy clearly states that where a potential conflict of interest exists, it shall be the responsibility of the person involved to notify the board of trustees of the guidance and take appropriate action. An interested person who has a potential conflict of interest in a decision-making process shall recuse himself or herself from the decision-making process.”

“The executive committee of the board, consisting of board members who have no conflicts of interest, determines the compensation of the head of school, the school's chief executive officer. Reasonable compensation is determined based upon performance, experience and comparison to comparable institutions. Comparable institutions include relevant benchmarks from the national association of independent schools (nais), participation in the independent school data exchange (index) and other relevant data. The head of school determines the compensation for all other key administrators based on the same benchmarks used to determine the head of school's compensation. The executive committee received a rebuttable presumption checklist from an independent consultant for the current contract duration. The aforementioned process was completed in 2023 for 2023-24 salaries. The approval is documented in the rebuttable presumption checklist.”

“The school makes its form 990 available for public inspection as required under section 6104 of the internal revenue code. The return is also available on guidestar.org and other similar types of websites. In addition, the form 990, financial statements, conflict of interest policy, articles of incorporation, and by-laws are also available upon written request or by calling the organization directly.”

“Loss on disposal of fixeds assets -29,235.”

“The organization has a committee that is responsible for the oversight of the audit of its financial statements and the selection of an independent accountant. The process has not changed from the prior year.”