(SLIDESHOW) Can a School District Audit Be Exciting?

On a scale of 1 to 10, how boring do these terms sound? “Audit” and “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.”

A 10? An 11, maybe?

Yet even though the two budget documents don’t make for page-turning reading, they are vital in a period when taxpayers are scrutinizing government spending ever more closely.

Of course, excitement is all in the presentation. Rows of numbers may cloak the trends in a fog of information. But transform them into line, bar and pie charts, and the stories behind the digits start to pop out.

Here are eight graphs that unlock these stories. All information comes from the annual audit and Comprehensive Annual Financial Report—which were discussed at Thursday’s School Board meeting.

These graphs represent just a few of the stories inside the dense documents. If you’re feeling adventurous, click on the PDFs at the end of the slideshow to read the entire reports.