Bronx Charter School for Excellence

“The school utilizes excellence community schools, inc. ("excellence"), an unrelated 501(c)(3) organization, to provide management and other administrative support services to the school. The school delegated certain education and instruction, business operations, and human resources and employment duties to excellence. Included in these services, employees of excellence fill the position of upper management including ceo, cfo and various directors of education and instruction.”

“The finance committee reviews the draft 990 before it is filed. The entire form 990 is emailed to all board members prior to filing with the irs.”

“The conflict of interest policy is distributed to officers, board members and key employees annually. After reviewing, board members and key employees fill out annual conflict of interest certification forms in which they disclose any conflicts of interest and prohibited excess benefit transactions. The executive assistant to the executive director is responsible for ensuring that all board members and key employees complete their forms and for reviewing the executed forms for any problematic conflict of interest.”

“The board of trustees approves the salary for the executive director and principals. The compensation for these positions must take into consideration the candidate or employee's years of experience and his or her ability to meet the standards set by bcse for the position. Once the salary is set, subsequent increases generally follow increases afforded to the rest of the staff. Acknowledgement of extraordinary performance are recognized through bonuses. The board uses current applicable national and regional compensation surveys for high performing charter schools and non-profits. Additional comparisons are derived by looking at the 990's for non profits of similar size and complexity. This cross comparison provides some broader perspective to account for the emergence in charter schools of more stable and seasoned senior staff. The compensation for other management positions will be reviewed and approved by the education committee as follows: 1. The education committee reviews and approves the organizational chart of bcse establishing lines of accountability. 2. The education committee verifies the evaluation processes and performance review procedures. 3. The executive director reviews comparative salary information provided by nyc charter center or other comparable research using 990's to ensure that the salary structure of the bronx charter school for excellence continues to attract and maintain quality employees. 4. The finance committee and board of trustees approves compensation for the "key employees/highest compensated individuals" based on recommendations made by the executive director and principal. 5. Contemporaneous substantiation and recordkeeping for deliberation and decision regarding the compensation arrangement was made.”

“Bcse makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy and financial statements available to the public upon request.”

“The board has not changed its process for selecting the independent auditor nor have they changed the oversight of the audit from prior years.”