Glossary of acronyms & terms

Reference

Every acronym used across the platform, with its full expansion and how it is applied in this validation work. Acronyms shown elsewhere in the application are underlined — hover for the definition, or click to jump to the entry here.

ADM OEI CQ2 CAP CAT MSCS DSCR SBOA GAAP GPA FY CPA OCR PDF XLSX CSV KPI JQ RD RLS N/A

Framework & oversight

OEIOffice of Education Innovation: The City of Indianapolis Mayor's Office division that authorizes and oversees mayor-sponsored charter schools. OEI publishes the performance framework and the annual accountability reports this platform independently replicates.
CQ2Core Question 2 — Financial Health: The financial-health section of the OEI performance framework. CQ2 covers near-term measures (current ratio, days cash, enrollment variance, default) and sustainability measures (total margin, debt-to-asset, debt service coverage ratio, cash flow).
CATCharter Accountability Team: The review group (OEI staff plus contracted accountants) that reviews financial submissions, accounting-treatment questions, and exceptions before a rating is finalized.
MSCSMayor-Sponsored Charter School: A charter school authorized by the Mayor of Indianapolis through OEI. BELIEVE Circle City High School, Global Preparatory Academy, and Matchbook Learning are the three MSCS schools validated here.
GPAGlobal Preparatory Academy: One of the three mayor-sponsored charter schools validated in this platform. (In this application GPA always refers to the school, not to a grade point average.)

Financial metrics

ADMAverage Daily Membership: The official count of students enrolled and attending on the state count days. Indiana takes a Fall (October) count and a Spring (February) count. ADM drives state tuition-support funding and is the numerator in the OEI enrollment variance metric.
DSCRDebt Service Coverage Ratio: Net income plus depreciation and interest expense, divided by annual principal and interest payments. It measures whether operations generate enough cash to cover debt payments. OEI's Meets Standard threshold is 1.10 or greater.

Data & systems

CAPCharter Accountability Portal / Corrective Action data set: The intermediate financial data set maintained in Salesforce that OEI and its accountants use when producing published ratings. In this platform CAP values are a validation target for comparison only — they are never used as inputs to a Nsites calculation.
OCROptical Character Recognition: Text recognition applied to scanned images. Where a source PDF is a scan and no text layer exists, this platform flags the limitation rather than guessing at values.
RLSRow Level Security: Database access rules that restrict which records a signed-in user can read or change. Referenced in platform and data-handling notes.

Documents & evidence

SBOAIndiana State Board of Accounts: The state agency that prescribes audit requirements for Indiana public and charter schools. SBOA supplemental reports accompany the audited financial statements and are used here as independent source evidence.
PDFPortable Document Format: The file format for most published reports, audits, and supplemental schedules loaded into the data room. Source references cite the PDF page and the printed page.
XLSXExcel Workbook: Spreadsheet source files such as Mayor Reports workbooks and financial models. Source references cite the sheet name and the exact cell.
CSVComma-Separated Values: A plain-text tabular file format accepted for data submissions and used for spreadsheet exports from this platform.
RDRequested Document item: The identifier prefix (RD-01, RD-02, …) for each document on the Indianapolis data request form in the data room.

Process

GAAPGenerally Accepted Accounting Principles: The U.S. accounting standards governing how the audited financial statements are prepared. Accounting-treatment exceptions in this platform are judged against GAAP presentation in the audited statements.
FYFiscal Year: The school's 12-month accounting year, running July 1 through June 30 in Indiana. FY2024-25 means July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025.
CPACertified Public Accountant: The licensed accountants (Donovan CPAs in this engagement) who prepare or review the audited statements and confirm accounting treatments raised in the exceptions queue.
KPIKey Performance Indicator: The summary metric cards shown at the top of each tab. Every KPI card here is clickable and drills into the underlying list or calculation.
JQJudgment Queue item: The identifier prefix (JQ-001, JQ-002, …) for each accounting-judgment or methodology exception listed on the Exceptions - Review Needed page.
N/ANot Applicable: Used where a metric does not apply to a school for a period — for example a debt-default test where the school carries no debt. Distinct from 'Unable to Validate', which means the source evidence is missing.