Can We Trust the Numbers?

First question: can the numbers even be checked yet?

The most basic integrity test isn't whether the CAR matches the audit — it's whether an audit exists yet at all. As of June 2026, every peer district has a completed audit through FY2025. Iowa City's most recent audit is FY2024 — still the furthest behind — and it landed in June 2026, about two years after year-end, carrying five financial-statement material weaknesses plus qualified opinions on two federal programs. The pattern from FY2023 repeated: the books arrived very late and needed major correction. Its FY2025 self-reported numbers still cannot be verified by anyone.

District scorecard — reconciliation flag rate

Share of each district's dollar/ratio checks that fail to reconcile, ranked worst first. Audit timeliness is excluded here (it is a meta check, not a CAR-vs-audited number). A clean district shows 0%.

Read this with the audit-currency table above. A low rate can mean genuinely clean books (Pleasant Valley, Linn-Mar) — or, as with Iowa City, that the CAR reconciled fine for years (zero flags FY2017–2022) and then broke catastrophically in one recent year (FY2023) before going dark. Flag rate averages that single failure across the clean years, so Davenport's chronic ~2% drift ranks higher than Iowa City's acute breakdown. Reconciliation alone does not capture Iowa City's real problem — that there is no recent audit to reconcile against.

Most districts reconcile cleanly — six show a 0% flag rate. Davenport has the highest flag rate (28%), a chronic, broad-based pattern of small gaps year after year. Iowa City's rate is lower (9%) but its flags are concentrated and severe — they all land in FY2023, on the headline balances and the net change, in the exact year its audit was filed 26 months late with a material weakness. Davenport's problem is breadth; Iowa City's is depth.

Net change in fund balance — CAR vs audited

The single most telling check: did the change the CAR reported actually happen? Cells show the dollar gap (CAR minus audited net change); color is its size relative to the fund balance. Iowa City's FY2023 stands out — the CAR reported a +$1.04M gain, the audit found +$88K (a ~$951K overstatement). (We size this against the fund balance, not against the audited net change, because that base is often near zero.)

Ending General Fund balance — CAR vs audited

The bottom line: does the year-end balance the CAR reports match the audited books? A red outline flags a gap over 1% and $250K.

Available (spendable) reserves — CAR vs audited

The unassigned + assigned cushion a district can actually use, and the numerator of the solvency ratio. The CAR workbooks only carry this split for FY2023.

Operating cash — CAR vs audited

General Fund cash and investments — the literal money on hand. Carried in the CAR workbooks for FY2023.

Beginning balance vs prior year's audited ending — CAR vs audited

Does the CAR open the year where the previous year's audit closed it? A clean roll-forward should tie exactly.

Audit timeliness — months from year-end to filing

Not a CAR-vs-audited number, but a direct signal of reporting reliability: how long after the June 30 fiscal year-end the independent audit was actually filed. Flagged over 15 months.

Davenport — the breadth case

Where Iowa City's flags are a single severe year, Davenport's are a steady drumbeat — small CAR-vs-audited gaps that recur across revenue, expenditure, ending balance and net change, year after year. No single year is dramatic, but the books rarely tie out, which is its own kind of reporting-quality signal.

All 16 checks — at a glance

Every check the screen runs, how many district-years it flags, and Iowa City's most recent comparable result (FY2023, its last audited year). The bottom-line checks must reconcile regardless of accounting presentation; the classification-sensitive ones differ systematically (the CAR folds transfers into expenditures) and are shown but not flagged; the meta checks are about audit quality, not the CAR.