District Fiscal Services operates a uniform payroll system to pay more than 55,100 school employees in 22 school districts and four community college districts in the county. Five payroll cycles are processed each month, totaling more than $1.5 billion a year.

The division processes the commercial payments for 22 school districts and four community college districts in the county. Approximately 1,500 payments are processed daily for goods and services totaling more than $1 billion a year.

The county superintendent of schools is required to approve or disapprove the adopted budget for each school district in the county, review two interim financial reports for each district, and monitor the fiscal solvency of the districts throughout the year. In 2003-2004 the county superintendent approved school district budgets totaling more than $3.7 billion.

The Budget and Fiscal Services Unit continues to support the goals of the superintendent through prudent advice to program managers in the areas of Budget, Accounts Payable/Receivable, Child Development, and Attendance. Program revenue grew to a total of $335,131,598 because of an increase in student population and additional programs. The Riverside County Children and Families Commission, “First 5 Riverside,” provided $4.6 million in funding through 14 separate contracts that provided additional services to families and children.

The Accounting Unit processed approximately 2,700 monthly payments to local child-care providers that serve some 75,000 children, adding $37 million dollars to the local communities.

The Contracts/Purchasing Unit processed an average of 760 contracts and purchase orders per month with a dollar value in excess of $87,600,677 for the year.

Information Services supports the deployment and end user needs for software applications in use in Riverside County. Besides a comprehensive integrated business/personnel system, Galaxy, Information Services also supports a Student Information System used by nine districts. Twenty-three K-12 districts and four community college districts utilize the Galaxy System. This year we are adding support for an asset management and an upgraded integrated purchasing system.

Data Processing and Network Services keeps all Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE) programs and services, as well as all contracting districts, at the cutting edge of technology by specifying, installing, maintaining and replacing servers and high-speed printers that keep crucial business processes functioning. Currently, a districtwide phased implementation is under way, where mission-critical business applications are being serviced out of load-balanced application server clusters. Back-end services already run under high availability Unix platforms in a MC/ServiceGuard environment.

The department is charged with keeping RCOE and contracting districts online through the architecture, installation, and management of data networks. Our current Internet connection bandwidth is 155 Mbps, providing significantly faster access times for school districts using RCOE as an Internet service provider. We provide a full array of name services, secondary name services, and traffic monitoring services, among others to RCOE and contracting districts.

Systems Development develops and supports software systems used by RCOE and the districts throughout Riverside County. The Galaxy Business System is a fully integrated system encompassing 14 business areas that is used by 22 K-12 districts, the four community colleges, and RCOE. Each year, Galaxy handles in excess of $2.5 billion in accounting transactions, as well as processes payrolls for more than 50,000 employees. Systems Development also supports the automated scoring of student events such as Academic Decathlon and Mock Trial.

The 2004 Report to the Community was written and prepared by the Riverside County Office of Education. Copyright © 2004 Riverside County Superintendent of Schools. 3939 Thirteenth Street, Riverside, CA 92502-0868