The Council’s District of Columbia Public School’s (DCPS) Dashboard is an interactive data visualization tool, built in Tableau, that allows users to analyze the agency’s operating budget, expenditure, human resources (HR), and programmatic data. This tool is intended to assist the public in better understanding one of the District’s most complex budgets from fiscal year (FY) 2015 -2018. Please click here for a quick guide on how to use this dashboard.
Dashboard Tabs: Quick Guide
The Agency Summary tab includes a high-level snapshot of budget, expenditure, and HR data by divisions.
The School Summary tab includes individual school-level data. This tab does not include any resources in Central Office or School Support that may be directly allocated to students.
The Non-local Funds Summary tab includes high-level budget and expenditure data for the following funds: intra-district, grant, private donation, and private grant. It includes data on the amount budgeted and spent between Schools (school-based budgets), School Support, and Central Office by the specific fund type and fiscal year. Individual schools can also be selected to display if specific funds were allocated under its school-based budget.
The HR Summary tab includes position-level data from FY15 - FY18.
The HR Budget & Expenditure Summary tab includes personnel (PS) budget and expenditures by fiscal year and fund type.
The Non-Personnel Summary tab includes vendors’ expenditure data by division and fund type.
The Revised Budget by Year and Month tab includes budget changes (increases and decreases) by year, quarter, month, and amount. It includes the ability to drill down by fiscal year, division, team, school, fund type, and fund category (personnel vs non-personnel). This tab should reflect all budget modifications and reprogrammings throughout the fiscal year.
Notes
This dashboard blends various data from the District’s official financial and human resources systems. Other data sources for PARCC, enrollment, and star ratings were obtained from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE).
The human resources data is a snapshot as of October 1 of each fiscal year from the District’s official human resources system.
Comparing two different schools’ budgets could be misleading without taking into consideration that individual school budgets reflect various student populations such as general education, special education, English language learners, at-risk, etc. The UPSFF (public schools and public charter schools) lists the different weights and funding associated with each student population. The total enrollment numbers (projected and audited) are aggregated in this dashboard.
Negative expenditures under the Expenditures Summary tab most likely indicates a reversal under the District’s accrual-based accounting methodology. You can read more about government accounting best practices here.
The Non-Personnel Summary does not contain vendor-level information for goods and services procured under American Express or DC Purchase Card (P-Card).
This dashboard is best viewed on a desktop computer.
This will be an iterative process and we welcome your feedback. Please send us any questions, comments, or suggestions.
*FULLSCREEN DASHBOARD* 1) Scroll down and to the right-hand side within the dashboard pane. 2) Click the square icon.