Cherokee Schools Earn Positive Credit Ratings

CHEROKEE COUNTY, GA — The Cherokee County School District earned positive credit ratings from the world’s top agencies, benefitting the community’s taxpayers.

Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s financial service companies this month reaffirmed the district’s Aa2 and Aa+ ratings, respectively, and awarded Stable outlooks to both, which places the district in an outstanding position for future growth.

The district’s goal set by Superintendent of Schools Brian Hightower is to achieve the top AAA rating, and Cherokee Schools now is lined up to do so, as soon as the county sees more commercial and industrial growth to diversify its largely residential tax base.

“Our Office of Financial Management deserves high praise for its outstanding efforts over the last five years to reach this point,” Hightower said. “The work by Chief Financial Officer Kenneth Owen and his staff to advance our accounting and budgeting practices and business systems has been considerable. These improvements have yielded not only increased operational efficiency, but also lower costs for our insurance and borrowing needs, all of which benefit taxpayers.”

The Moody’s report commended Cherokee Schools for its “stable financial position supported by long-term planning, formal policies and conservative budgeting.” S&P, in its report, highlighted the district’s work to “improve budget assumptions and monitoring,” as well as its efforts to be “more conservative with revenue and expenditure estimates, which has led to positive operating results.”