12. a. The budget adopted by a charter school for the school year shall be provided for public inspection on the homepage of the charter school’s Internet website and made available in print in a “user-friendly” format using plain language. The Commissioner of Education shall, within the limit of funds appropriated or otherwise made available for this purpose, promulgate a “user-friendly,” plain language budget summary form for the use of charter schools for this purpose. The commissioner shall also promulgate a procedure and timeline for the submission by each charter school of the required budget summary form to the Department of Education.
b. The plain language budget summary shall provide the public with information in summary form about the budget of the charter school and shall include, in addition to an abbreviated version of the formal budget adopted by the charter school, any statistical information as the commissioner determines to be useful for the public’s understanding of the charter school’s fiscal matters and condition and shall also include, but not be limited to, the following information for both the budget year and prebudget year:
(1) all line items of appropriation aggregated by item type;
(2) revenues by major category, including private donation;
(3) the amount of available surplus;
(4) a description of unusual revenues or appropriations, with a description of the circumstances of the revenues or appropriations;
(5) a list of shared service agreements in which the charter school is participating;
(6) the salary of the lead person and the school business administrator employed by the charter school; and
(7) if either the lead person or school business administrator is a contracted service provider, each executed contract between the lead person or school business administrator and charter school.
c. The plain language budget summary shall be submitted to the department in a form as determined by the commissioner, and, upon its receipt of the summary, the department shall make the summary available to the public through an Internet website maintained by the department in an easily accessible location. The information on the website shall be presented as data that can be downloaded by the public for comparative purposes using commonly used software.
d. Upon the preparation of its budget, each board of trustees shall fix a date, place, and time for the holding of a public hearing upon the budget and the amounts of money necessary for the use of the charter school for the ensuing school year and the various items and purposes for which the funds will be used. The hearing shall be held at a time and place accessible to the public. The board of trustees shall cause notice of the public hearing and the statement annexed to the budget to be:
(1) published in the county or counties where the charter school is to be located on three occasions; and
(2) sent to the board of education of each school district of residence of the students enrolled in the charter school not less than four days prior to the date fixed for the public hearing. The notice sent to a board of education pursuant to this paragraph may be transmitted by the board of trustees via electronic mail.