We asked nearly 1,000 people about school money. Here's what we learned!

Article Sponsored by Executive Partner: KEV Group

In case you missed it, KEV Group just released a massive research report. It asked parents, school staff, and CFOs about the true costs of keeping money moving in K-12. You should read it for yourself, but we’ll cover some of the most important findings here.

1. There’s a contradiction at the heart of K-12 finance

We asked district CFOs a simple question: does your current approach to funds protect the money and the people handling it? 82% said yes. Then we asked those same CFOs to rate their district's financial risk. 61% called it moderate or higher.

Most CFOs are confident, but most CFOs feel at risk. These are the same people in the same survey and it’s hard to see how both responses can be true.

2. Financial incidents are the norm, not the exception.

The research also looked at the prevalence of financial incidents. This includes issues like missing funds, formal parent complaints, and audit findings. The results were shocking.

The majority of every group experienced a financial incident in the last three years. Serious incidents were also unsettlingly common, with about one in five districts experiencing a lawsuit and another one in five receiving adverse media coverage in their communities.

This isn't a story about a few bad actors committing fraud. It’s about good people doing the best they can with a system that wasn’t made to support them. More on that below.

3. In 2026, school payments still run on cash

Of all the ways to pay, cash is by far the least secure. To process a cash payment, it must be:

* Physically brought in, often by young students

* Manually counted by multiple parties

* Organized and entered into accounting systems

…all without a guaranteed receipt trail. Plus, it’s very easy for cash to be lost, damaged, or misappropriated.

Unfortunately, the least secure payment method is also by far the most common. 84% of district leaders, 69% of teachers and school administrators, and 60% of parents report using cash as a primary payment method for school fees. But it gets worse: Cash is only one of three informal payment methods the research looked at. The others were checks and personal payment apps like Venmo or Cash App. The majority of schools are using at least two of these informal methods.

Although it’s harder for a student to buy lunch (or new shoes) with their field trip money if it’s a check, checks still share most of the disadvantages and risks of cash.

Personal payment apps, on the other hand, carry a different set of risks. There’s very little oversight, no proper records, and a massive risk of fraud. Think of a teacher who has parents pay for a field trip by sending the money directly to the teachers’ Venmo account. It’s hard to know if the parents are paying the right amount, harder to process refunds, harder for the school to know which students have paid, etc. And what if that teacher leaves the school before they transfer the money? It’s a disaster waiting to happen. And yet over a third of schools are in this exact situation.

4. School staff are fatigued. Parents are losing faith in the system.

The research examines the financial cost of keeping money moving. This includes all the extra hours spent on spreadsheets, cash counting, and audit findings, as well as the monetary cost of processing checks and handling cash. It all adds up. But the most frightening cost is the emotional cost paid by parents in school staff.

About half of parents have experienced an issue with school payments in the last year, and the same amount say they’re experiencing payment fatigue. This is undermining their trust in the system: More than a third of parents say they’re not confident school funds reach their intended purpose.

Then there are the teachers and bookkeepers handling all these payments. Few bookkeepers are formally trained accountants, and virtually no teachers are. Yet they’re being asked to manage funds every day. Not only is this causing them significant stress, but it’s also taking time away from their primary work, like educating students.

The research suggests that there’s a very serious price being paid by school staff and parents. Pair this observation with the high rate of financial incidents, and it’s not surprising that most CFOs say their districts are at risk.

5. Everyone wants the same fix. Most districts don't have it yet.

CFOs feel at risk, payments are stuck in the 90’s, school staff and parents are stressed...it’s easy for this research to paint a gloomy picture. But as always, there’s more to the story. The truth is, each audience’s issues are simple to resolve. Not easy, but simple. And fortunately, the audiences agree on the fix.

District CFOs want a real-time view of the money moving across every school (fewer than a third have it today). School staff want one system that handles every kind of payment, so cash, checks, and online payments don't have to be tracked in separate ways. Parents want one place to see every payment, receipt, and outstanding balance, which would help reduce payment fatigue and make it easier to keep everything straight. And of course, these solutions exist. Districts just need to adopt them.

The takeaway

The status quo isn’t good enough. But that doesn’t mean it has to stay.

Every finding in the report points to the same lever: when districts can see what’s happening across their schools, confidence rises, risk falls, and the burden eases for the people doing the work.