Skip to content

Blog

3 Tips for Making the Case for Data Analytics Tools

The seven most expensive words are, “We have always done it that way.” This statement rests on the foundation that without embracing change and the willingness to move beyond what has been historically done, we are risking greater losses than potential gains. In this dynamic environment, it is critical to evaluate the needs of your organization from multiple angles, past, present, and future. The technology and processes that worked at one time may not meet the needs for the current or future environment.

The seven most expensive words are,“We have always done it that way.”

 

Here are 3 tips to move your organization forward:

 

1. Conduct an ROI Analysis

Without taking the time to reflect on the current processes and technologies in place, we continue to make decisions that may not be in our best interest. An ROI analysis is key when discussing the implementation of new technology because it sheds light on how new tools can assist in performing tasks at higher efficiency and output levels.

For example, as you are working to put together your monthly financial forecast and budget proposals, consider the time you are investing to complete such tasks and how often you find yourself asking questions such as, “Is there an easier way to find this answer? How do I account for this? What are the implications of this decision?” Tools like Budget Management Analytics (formerly 5Cast Plus) can be leveraged to answer those questions.

2. Be Forward-thinking

To successfully adopt new technology, you must have an intimate understanding of how the tools will support your current and future needs. Consider the variety of variables that will impact your job area, performance, and decision making. This may include:

  • Expense pressures caused by mandates
  • Fluctuations in funding from state and federal sources
  • Board campaign promises
  • Labor union demands
  • Additional administrative responsibilities

Now consider the frequency of these variables and your ability to prepare and plan for such. Adding an analytics software solution to your toolbox eases the pressure on you and your team to find time to address all these variables, and puts you in a better position to handle the road ahead.

You may enjoy this hand-picked podcast:

[Podcast] How to Use Analytics in Schools Schools are swimming in data, but there is a difference between having data and using it to make better decisions. How can you avoid being data-rich but information-poor? Listen Now

3. Communicate Value

A common challenge in implementing technology is receiving the buy-in to not only purchase the tools, but to incorporate them into organizational processes and strategies. A great starting point to address this is by identifying the multiple “pain point” areas that the technology can assist with. Incorporate your ROI analysis to communicate the costs vs. the benefits. Develop a strategy on how you want to introduce and train staff, as this will begin the mindset shift to embrace. Finally, share your “wins” — communicate what you have accomplished or plan to accomplish with the tools to spread confidence and excitement across the organization.

The goal is to have technology fit seamlessly into your day, not just fit your day around it. Enabling your organization with school budgeting tools that will lead to higher performance will increase the confidence your stakeholders and community have in your decisions.

Three Steps for Effectively Measuring SEL Program Effectiveness

For the past 10 years or so, school districts have wrestled with implementing social and emotional learning (SEL) standards within their schools.

To support the social emotional needs of their students, school districts have attempted a variety of solutions, including hiring student support staff members such as guidance counselors, social workers, and/or psychologists to provide targeted interventions and support for students. Some districts have purchased research-based curricula, student response surveys, and strategies for teachers to incorporate into their daily lessons.

While districts are actively exploring the best means to deliver social emotional supports for students, one struggle clearly remains: How does a school district measure the effectiveness of their SEL programming?

Determining outcomes related to the SEL needs of students is difficult, as so much can be outside the control of the school. A student’s basic needs, including their social and emotional needs, are meant to be addressed both at home and in the school building, but frequently those lines are blurred.

As a result, districts must answer three basic questions as they relate to SEL outcomes:

  1. What do we want to measure?
  2. How do we want to measure it?
  3. Based on the results, what action will we take?

 

What do we want to measure?

For a school district to tackle such a multifaceted topic as the social emotional wellness of their students, it must first establish its goal. A district must ask itself, “What do we want to measure as it relates to SEL?”

A place to begin is by analyzing national or state social emotional learning standards. Identify generally accepted key standards, and then use those as the basis for developing your district’s goals. This analysis of standards is best done with a small, core decision-making team that is representative of administrative, instruction, student services, and/or additional key stakeholders. These voices will all be critical in messaging your goals and action plans, so engaging them at the goal setting stage is crucial.

Once you’ve completed this process, establish a goal or set of goals for your district. Be sure to keep them simple — something that can easily be communicated to all stakeholders, including school boards, students, staff, and parents. Additionally, try to keep the goals targeted, and to no more than three total. This will provide you with greater focus as you begin your planning and communication.

How do we want to measure it?

The next step is to establish the methods for measuring your progress against your goals. The outcomes and measurement tools should be directly aligned with your goals, since (and please forgive me for using a sports analogy) you will want to know what the score is for each quarter of the game.

Key points of data many of our clients use to measure their various SEL goals include:

  • Attendance rates
  • Office visits — to guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, etc.
  • Student grades — specifically, multiple failing grades
  • Participation in student support groups
  • Survey results — from the students’ perspective
  • Behavioral data — including suspensions and discipline referrals

Typically, there is no “one thing” that indicates the social emotional wellness of a student. As educators, we must listen and evaluate multiple indicators to ensure each student is on a path to success and on track for their next grade and/or post-secondary goals. This complete picture will provide schools with a 360-degree view of the whole child and, if necessary, will allow the opportunity for targeted interventions and supports.

Based on the results, what action will we take?

In talking with clients and prospective clients of Frontline’s Student Analytics Lab, one of the first actions taken on an administrative level is the creation of one set of data dashboards in which all key team members can view important data points as they relate to the district’s SEL goals.

Instead of a variety of spreadsheets housed in different offices within the district, a dashboard tool, like that provided in Student Analytics Lab, gives each critical team member the “on-demand data” he or she needs to drill from a district-level view to a student-level view in a few clicks.

From there, a district or school team member can gain a “whole child” view of a student, including their academic performance, behavior incidents, and SEL survey responses. This critical view can become central to daily, weekly, or monthly intervention team meetings. Not only can the district’s intervention team analyze the data on a “right now” basis, they can also track performance year-over-year on these multiple measures.

Once the data is viewed by the necessary team members, the group can determine the proper action to take, whether at the district, school, or student level. Certainly, implementing a new program or hiring new staff may be an appropriate action to take if the data calls for such an action. However, often having a conversation with a child and/or his/her parent or guardian provides key insights into the root of the SEL issues, and positive next steps are created to support the student.

These critical conversations are at the core of any social emotional issue. People need to feel a sense of belonging, and children need to know that the adults in their school care about them. SEL data dashboards provide tools schools can use to ensure that no student’s “cry for help” will go unnoticed or unsupported.

If your district is interested in learning more about how our clients are efficiently using data dashboards to support SEL and academic decision-making, you can schedule a personal demonstration with a member of our team.

An Open Door to Increased Medicaid Revenue in Schools: School-Based Medicaid Expansion through Free Care

If you feel like you’ve just gotten a handle on the complexities of billing for Medicaid in schools, there’s good news and there’s bad news.

The bad news:

There’s a change coming for Medicaid billing in schools, and you may need to learn a new set of processes and requirements.

The good news:

This change opens the door for expanded Medicaid revenue and better mental health care for students (worth the hassle!).

School-based Medicaid expansion through Free Care: what is it?

As you know, it has long been the standard that only students with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) are eligible for Medicaid billing in schools. But in 2014, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a letter to Medicaid directors that implemented a modification to the Free Care Rule known as the free care policy reversal. Per this letter, School-Based Medicaid programs can cover any student with a plan of care, not just students with IEPs and IFSPs specifically.

If this happened in 2014, why are you just now hearing about it? After several years of very slow adoption, the expansion of Free Care is finally gathering steam and possibly coming to your state – if it hasn’t already – so now is the time to prepare for it.

What difference could it make for your schools?

Because this guidance allows School-Based Medicaid programs to cover more students, it carries the potential for collecting more federal funding for school districts.

For instance, there may be Medicaid-enrolled students in your schools already receiving services for mental health, substance use, oral health, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and more.1 Whereas these services have historically only been eligible for Medicaid billing if tied to an IEP, in many states they are now eligible for Medicaid billing as long as there is an established Plan of Care – no IEP necessary! Without increasing the services provided to students, your schools have an opportunity for increased Medicaid revenue.

Schools may also have an opportunity for increasing services offered, especially in the area of mental and behavioral health. Because these services are more likely to be offered in crisis situations apart from the formalized documentation of special education, they could easily fall through the cracks of the Medicaid billing process. But districts who take this chance to standardize a Plan of Care for all services provided to Medicaid-enrolled students can now bill Medicaid for those services and use the funding to offer expanded support to students in need – no small matter, given the rising mental health needs of school-aged children in recent years.

It’s a win-win situation: more services offered to students and increased federal funding for schools. So how do you make it happen for your school? What do you need to do?

 

Confirm your state’s status

First, you’ll need to confirm where your state is in the process of rolling out the Free Care Expansion.

If your state does not yet have free care, these definitions may be helpful to you:

  • State Medicaid Plain (SMA): A comprehensive written state plan for Medicaid administration to be approved by CMS; serves as an agreement for how states will run their Medicaid programs.
  • State Plan Amendments (SPA): To implement changes to the existing SMA, states can submit a SPA to CMS for approval.
  • Managed Care Contract Policies (MCCPs): Contracts between the state agency and managed care entity, or requests for proposals for contracts; issues by state agencies. With the purpose of managed care organizations for contracts to provide Medicaid services.

Want to know what your state’s status is? Check out this resource.

 

Master eligibility requirements for your state

While eligibility requirements will vary from state to state, as with other aspects of Medicaid, students need to meet the following minimum qualifications in order to be covered by expanded school-based Medicaid:

  • Students who are enrolled in Medicaid
  • Service providers are covered in the state plan
  • Services are provided by a provider who meets the state plan qualifications2
  • Billing procedures comply with the state requirements
  • Services are provided under a formal Plan of Care which establishes medical necessity for treatment

The Plan of Care requirements will also vary by state, but common Plan of Care requirements include:

  • Start date and end date
  • Goals and/or objectives
  • Duration and frequency of service
  • Diagnostic/treatment code
  • Medical grade signature

 

Hand-picked content for you:

Guide to Fee-for-Service Medicaid Claiming for Schools

 

Examine district processes

Successfully implementing expanded Medicaid billing may ultimately come down to one thing: consistent, audit-proof practices that are implemented district wide. As you prepare for the implementation of expanded Free Care, these are areas to consider.

Plans of Care: Develop a district-wide, consistent process for both creating a Plan of Care and validating the existence of Plans of Care for any given service. As you do, consider:

  • A standard Plan of Care should meet common requirements for all therapy and health services.
  • All 504, RTI, and other service plans should include Plan of Care requirements.
  • Staff should be trained in Plan of Care writing.
  • Billing should include a system to record Plan of Care validations.
  • Your method of signature (e.g., electronic signature) must comply with your state’s requirements.

Session Notes: Your standard processes for session notes will need to be expanded to include students who do not have IEPs:

  • Update your policy and procedures to make documentation universal for all students, not just those with IEPs and/or IFSPs.
  • Train staff to ensure that newly eligible service providers understand the rules and regulations, including Medicaid-level supervision requirements.
  • Start the process of logging transportation for a smooth transition if/when this service area becomes billable.

Parental Consent: As with session notes, your policy and procedures for collecting parental consent have possibly been limited to IEPs. Ensure that they are modified as needed:

  • Ensure your parental consent form includes all school-based health services and you have a process for validating for IEP parental consent and universal parental consent.
  • Consider when in your special education process parental consent is obtained. If it is collected at the IEP Meeting, consider moving it to an earlier stage in the process in order to bill for evaluations and for additional programs, such as 504.
  • Develop a procedure for collecting parental consent for students not in the special education process.
  • Work with your vendor to establish parental consent in multiple types of programs, not just special education.

 

Hand-picked content for you:

Navigating Parental Consent for Medicaid

 

Records and Documentation: While a system for documenting and recording student information goes beyond the area of Medicaid, it is essential to a functional Medicaid program. In the case of an audit, your schools must be able to produce compliant documentation – which means it needs to exist and be accessible.

  • Ask yourself…Does your district have a universal documentation system? What is the process to ensure documentation is timely and complete? Where are paper records stored? Is there a process to digitize paper records that can be associated to specific students? How long does your vendor retain records? What is the process to obtain data if you switch vendors?
  • Ensure newly eligible providers understand what is required of them, from new NPI requirements to supervision logs to additional licensure records.
  • Is your system or vendor up to date with rules and regulations per the expansion? Does your Medicaid program properly validate for all plans of care? Does it distinguish between parental consent for IEP and parental consent for all services?

 

Hand-picked content for you:

Best Practices for Service Documentation

 

Conclusion

Schools who do the up-front work required to establish efficient Medicaid processes will find that the expansion of the Free Care Rule opens the door to new sources of revenue in a time when education budgets are tight and student need is on the rise.

 

Looking for even more help to dive into the expansion of Free Care? Check out these additional resources:

State Efforts to Implement the Free Care Policy Reversal are helpfully tracked in this ongoing brief from the Healthy School Campaign.

Advocates’ Guide to the Change in the Medicaid Free Care Rule: Community Catalyst shares the background and history of the Free Care Rule and outlines advocacy tips for bringing its expansion to your state.

A Guide to Medicaid Claiming for Schools: Everything you need to know about enhancing Medicaid claiming.

 

1 Mays A. (2020). Advancing Student Health and Achievement Through Medicaid: Lessons Learned from State Efforts to Expand Medicaid-Funded School Health Services. The Journal of school health, 90(12), 918–922.

2 Wilkinson, A., Gabriel, A., Stratford, B., Carter, M., Rodriguez, Y., Okogbue, O., Somers, S., Young, D., & Harper, K. (2020, December 14). Early Evidence of Medicaid’s Important Role in School-based Health Services Child Trends. Retrieved September 1, 2021.

Cash Flow Monitoring for Long-Term Solvency

Why SBOs should consider implementing cash flow monitoring as a long-term solvency solution

Beyond ensuring monthly liquidity for operations, why should SBOs consider implementing cash flow monitoring as a long-term solvency solution? Knowing how your district’s monthly revenue and expenditures are trending supports healthy cash reserve planning and timely monitoring of your financial forecast.
Strong fiscal management is grounded in being able to effectively track variances between monthly estimates of revenue and expenses compared to actual results.

Cash flow balances

Figure 1 is an example of a district’s monthly cash flow balance resulting from its monthly income and expense activity. These data help school business officials answer these questions every month:

  • How does this year’s monthly cash flow compare to last year?
  • How does this year’s annual cash flow total compare to the forecast?
  • Is there any indication that this year’s forecast (and possibly subsequent years) may change?
  • Are there months when the cash balance is stressed?

 
Figure 1


 
The bars in Figure 1 represent the “ebb and flow” of the district’s monthly cash balance. Peak cash balance months develop as districts receive real estate revenue advances in August and April. Low cash balance months occur as the real estate advances are used by monthly expenses that exceed revenue.

Even though this district’s ending cash balance is positive at the beginning and end of the fiscal year, a negative cash balance is projected for March. The school business office must project how much the district will spend and receive in revenue monthly to know when and how much cash flow borrowing is required to meet the daily operational needs of the district.

While this example provides insight for a district anticipating cash balance issues within the fiscal year, school districts can run into situations where year-to-date monthly trends provide a financial scenario that is different from what the district’s annual budget was estimated to be.

Budgets typically are set before the fiscal year commences; however, as the school year progresses, actual results can change what the year-end totals will look like. Cash flow forecasting provides an additional analysis of how the district is performing in relation to the budget and helps determine if any changes to the budget are necessary.

 

Year-to-Date Analysis

Table 1

Table 1 shows that the district’s revenue is trending lower for the current fiscal year when compared to the amount received during the same period for the previous fiscal year. If this variance was not expected, the CFO must determine whether it is due to timing or an unanticipated decrease in revenue. The answer to these questions could change the district’s inter-year cash flow projections and can help them construct cash flow estimates for the remaining months.
 

Monthly Projections to Complete the Analysis

Cash flow forecasting of monthly projections for the remaining months of the fiscal year helps construct an annual total from actual/estimated monthly data to compare to annual forecast/projection.

One method to establish projections for the remaining months is to compare your current year’s projections to the previous year’s actual amounts. Some revenue and expenses follow trends or patterns from year to year.

SBOs can use this pattern method when the revenue/ expense line item they are reviewing is cyclical—for example, real estate tax collections that occur every August and March, large contract amounts that are due the during the same period every year, etc. Once monthly actual data is available, the SBO can hone projection levels for the remaining months.

This recent-month method is most often used with regard to salary and benefits. After a district finalizes its contract terms and hiring needs for the year, month-over-month expense levels typically will be consistent.

Using September or October as the base month, in combination with historical monthly fluctuations, can provide cash flow projections for the remaining months that will enable districts to determine if the district is trending toward or away from the annual budget amounts.

An additional method to complete monthly cash flow projections is to calculate the average percentage of annual revenue or expenditures that occurred monthly over the past three to five years. This monthly allocation of cash flow forecasting is often used for revenue and expenditures that tend to be more volatile in monthly year-over-year behavior.

If during the past five years the district spent 10% of its supply expenses in December, the SBO would multiply the budget amount by 10% to calculate the December cash flow projection amount for supplies. The multi-year averaging smooths out the volatility of a single year.

These are just three methods an SBO can use to calculate cash flow projections. Perhaps the most important step in this process, however, is the analysis of the data once the projections are complete.

What Is Your Cash Flow Telling You?

While school districts spend a considerable amount of time developing their budget, the district’s revenue and expenditures rarely total the budgeted amount from the beginning of the year.

Table 2


 
The example in Table 2 shows that revenue projections for the remaining months are significantly lower than the amounts collected in the previous fiscal year. The district’s cash flow forecast has projected a 67.7% decrease in All Other Revenue. The significant drop estimated in these cash flow projections verifies the district’s anticipated revenue levels in the annual budget.

Even though the district’s annual budget may be set annually, cash flow forecasting is a continuous process that should be monitored and analyzed every month. This will provide the SBO with the capability to identify when the finances are going astray from the annual budget, determine the impact on the monthly cash balance of the district, and report out the impact on the district’s current and future fiscal stability.

Authors: Ryan Stechschulte, Andrew Geistfeld, and Ryan Ghizzoni, SFO
Ryan Stechschulte is Treasurer/CFO for Toledo City School District in Toledo, Ohio, and an ASBO Board member.
Andrew Geistfeld is Treasurer/CFO for Upper Arlington City School District in Columbus, Ohio.
Ryan Ghizzoni is a Director, Analytics for Frontline Education.
 
This article originally appeared in the March 2022 issue of School Business Affairs magazine and is reprinted with permission of the Association of School Business Officials International (www.asbointl.org). The text herein does not necessarily represent the views or policies of ASBO International, and use of this imprint does not imply any endorsement or recognition by ASBO International and its officers or affiliates.

The Six Key Elements to a Winning Budget Presentation

There are no two ways about it: presenting your district’s annual budget is hard. Effectively communicating your district’s financial state is difficult enough, and the differences in perspectives from key stakeholders only compounds that.

When you factor in the upheaval brought on by the pandemic, financial leaders in education are faced with what can feel like an impossible task. Despite of all this, it is possible to create a budget presentation that tells your district’s story in a way everyone can understand. Here are the six critical elements your budget presentation needs in order to be successful.

1. Offer a Balanced Perspective

It almost goes without saying: transparency is perhaps the most critical part of your budget presentation. Tell all sides of your district’s story, sharing both the good and bad. Don’t be afraid to expose those vulnerabilities – being upfront about mistakes actually serves to build trust between you and the key stakeholders you’re presenting to.

While it’s important to be open about potential shortcomings, that isn’t to say you should let them discourage your audience, or cast doubt on the rest of your presentation. Instead, outline the district’s plans to work on those areas of improvement.

Another major part of ensuring a balanced presentation is to compare your district’s outcomes to its peers. Don’t only compare your district favorably to other districts that aren’t doing as well. Everyone knows that no district is perfect. Comparisons to districts doing better than yours is in certain areas helps illustrate a realistic picture about the current state of your schools.

2. Tell a Believable Story

In both life and budget presentations, honesty is often the best policy. That means your presentation has to be a work of non-fiction. Figures should be concrete and reasonable, and statements should be backed up with solid data.

The good thing about data is its accessibility. Anyone can take the time to collect it, and indeed some of the people you present to will have their own data for reference. It’s up to you to provide truthful interpretations of your data, not just to be in control of the narrative, but to ensure that the trust you’re trying to build doesn’t erode.

Remember that engaged stakeholders will have questions – some of which will be difficult. Prepare to back up the claims you make during your presentation. If someone asks a question you can’t answer completely, tell that person the truth and let them know you’ll follow up with them once you have an answer. Crucially, make sure you do follow up!

3. An Understandable Presentation is a Good Presentation

You spend your days in the thick of your district’s data. You understand the financial landscape of your schools in a way few others do.

So it’s up to you to break down the complexities that otherwise come naturally to those in your position. Your audience is no doubt engaged and concerned about the matters discussed in your budget presentation, but they may not share the same level of understanding as your own.

Assume that your audience needs a thorough explanation about most of the concepts you cover. It will help them understand your perspective better.

Remember the adage ‘Keep It Simple.’ Jargon and unexplained abbreviations can be left in your office. By removing complexity from your presentation, you open the door for greater understanding.

4. Illuminate Your District’s Individuality (and Share Commonalities)

Every district has its own story, and no two years are the same. That’s why it’s not enough to simply dump this year’s data into last year’s presentation deck. Your budget presentation’s success this year relies on presenting new analysis conveying the triumphs and challenges of your schools. Demonstrate the unique position your district is in and watch your audience’s understanding grow.

Remember, though, no school district exists in a vacuum. Your district is similar in some ways to other districts. Fair comparisons can help illuminate the key differences between your district and others.

5. Consider the Major Intended Takeaways

Every great presentation starts with a plan. And that plan can only form after you understand its purpose. Think about the clear messages you want to deliver to key stakeholders during this presentation. Discuss these with key district administrators and determine together what major takeaways you want to elucidate.

It’s important to be aligned on these messages well before the presentation itself. You don’t want conflicting messages to come from other administrators.

Like any good story, your budget presentation should have:

  • A strong beginning
  • A substantial middle
  • A compelling ending

Each element should flow into the next. One example of how to do this is as follows:

  • Use prior year actuals to create the basis for the rest of your presentation
  • Summarize the projected results of your current year
  • Outline next year’s budget
  • Show last year, this year, and next year side by side as part of a multi-year financial projection

In each of these phases, use data when it makes sense to underscore your messages, but avoid bombarding your audience with too many numbers. A “data dump” might feel like the most thorough way to tell your district’s story, but key points can get lost in a flood of facts and figures.

6. Make It Interesting

The way you present is another major key to your success. The fact of the matter is budget presentations can be a little dry and obscure. Minds can wander. Do your best to bring energy to the proceedings. It will keep your audience engaged.

This isn’t to say you have to put on a show-stopping, award-winning performance (though that will certainly help). If you can communicate your enthusiasm for the subject, that’s enough.

If you have to make this presentation to different audiences, factor in their particular concerns, and which figures or key areas they may want to focus on.

Keep in mind, different people pick up information in different ways. Some may be satisfied with just graphs and charts. Others may want to dig into spreadsheets. You don’t have to include spreadsheets in your slide deck – in fact you should probably leave them out – but it may be helpful to make them available for those that request them.

All of this preparation and planning might sound daunting, to say nothing of the prospect of presenting. But if you take the time to get the details right and remember these six keys, you’ll put together a budget presentation that helps your audience understand your district’s story.

You may enjoy this handpicked content:

Blog: How to Produce an Epic Financial Story
On-demand Webinar: A Winning Model for Your Budget Presentation
On-demand Webinar: Analytics-based Strategies to Equitably Address Opportunity Gaps

How to Produce an Epic Financial Story

As the finance administrator of your district, having a good story and pairing it with compelling visuals is perhaps the most important responsibility of your position. That’s because you’re the person responsible for developing strategies — and even the best, most thought-out strategies are only as good as your ability to align the organization and stakeholders behind them.  If there’s no buy-in, there’s no implementation.

So, “How can I turn budget numbers into a good story?” you may ask.  That’s a good question.  The following is your guide to producing an epic financial story.

Connect the Dots

Have you ever been part of a board session where hours were devoted to the discussion of field trips, classroom purchases, curriculum changes, and more, only to have your budget proposal approved in minutes?  There was a time when this was viewed as a positive – but those days are in the past. This sad reality exists because:

  • many board members don’t understand school finance
  • the school budget is viewed as a standalone entity

Business officials need to change this paradigm and make their boards and stakeholders care about the district’s financials. Start by connecting financial operations with curricular decisions. Look at your strategic plan in parallel with various initiatives – does your budget align?

A community member should be able to look at a school district’s budget and have a good sense for what is being prioritized in the strategic plan before even looking at it. Does your budget reflect district goals? Does your board understand this?

How to Effectively Prepare and Communicate Your Budget Presentation to Stakeholders

Look Backwards to Move Forwards

Another, related idea, is to look backwards at previous years’ budgets and ask questions, like:

  • Did outcomes match the money invested?
  • Did the dollars invested in a given project produce the outcomes we were hoping for?
  • If not, how are we adjusting? What might we do differently with those dollars?

Thinking along these lines and asking these types of questions will not only lead to sound budget development processes for the entire organization, but will also lead to more engagement, excitement, and understanding from the board and community.

Budgeting – You Can’t Look Forward Without Looking Back

Use Visualizations to Bring Your Story to Life

As the chief school business official for your district, you wear many hats when it comes to your interactions with your Board and the community at large. But one of your primary activities is presenting data through storytelling. Whether that data has to do with the budget, tax levy, audit, collective bargaining comparatives, or just your monthly Treasurer’s Report, the ability to effectively tell your story will benefit you and your district as your peers can attest.

Visualizations are the key to this. Take for example this account from Saad Bawany, the Data Analyst at Oak Park Elementary District 97: “the use of peer groups and comparative analysis did wonders for our referendum committee. Not only did it help us internally evaluate our financial performance compared to similar districts, but also for presenting to the community. We were able to communicate that we had been good stewards of the local tax dollars from the last referendum while also displaying the impact of rising costs and ballooning enrollment that necessitated another referendum.”

Allen Albus, a retired Associate Superintendent for Lake Forest Districts 67 and 115, recounts an instance where a visualization changed the outcome of a board vote: “A few years ago, a couple members of the Board stated that they were going to propose a levy below the product of the Tax Cap formula.  In anticipation, the Administration used a simple illustration to show why the district should levy the full amount allowed under the formula. The graph illustrated how other local and state revenue sources had been decreasing since the beginning of the recession.  After the administrative presentation, the Board voted 7-0 to approve the levy as presented.  Later, one of the board members stated that the graphics presented made him change his mind.”

These types of data storytelling successes are not uncommon – but the skill it requires doesn’t develop overnight.  Own your data, strategize how best to present it and create an environment where it integrates with the priorities that your board and community have established for the district.

Lastly, leverage your peers.  Colleagues both within and outside your organization can provide valuable feedback and a fresh set of eyes that is not as immersed in the data as you are.

Ready to create your own epic financial story?

Fill out the form to download this customizable PowerPoint template and start telling your story.

 

Four Tips for Building Compelling Visual Stories with Data

As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But what happens if the picture is sending the wrong message, or the intended message is being missed? Storytelling with data should be a strategic objective for all school administrators because as the pace of information gathering and sharing increases, it is even more important to be data-savvy and understand how to communicate your position to stakeholders.

When developing your storyboard, make sure your story includes these six “must-haves”:

  • Story includes a beginning, middle, and end. Focus on a 360⁰ view of content.
  • Lead Character. What is the backstory, decision making process and actions?
  • Purpose. Understanding the goals and reasoning for the initiative.
  • Conflict. Remind your audience of the status quo and introduce your solution path.
  • Results. What is the outcome? This can be supported with visual analytics.
  • Make people care. Understand your audience and add emotional elements to create streamlined relatability.

Once you have finalized your storyboard to include all six “must-haves”, you can begin creating your visual analytics. Administrators are leveraging Frontline Analytics to access pre-built Q&A visuals for simple and guided storytelling.

Here are four tips to follow when developing your supporting visuals:

Visual Attributes

Ask yourself what the focus is of the visual you are trying to create. Consider which format is best suited to generate the intended insights. Data attributes may include: length, width, orientation, size, shape, curvature, spatial grouping and color. For instance, leverage a bar graph to display ranges of data.

Color

The use of color allows for greater understanding and digestion of the information being presented. Incorporate a maximum of 8 colors in your visual to enhance comprehension. Remember to only use colors that are significant to the data points being used.

Types of Data

The data points you are working with can be classified as qualitative, quantitative, or ordinal. Qualitative may include your Free and Reduced Low Income data. Quantitative may include your FTE totals, expenses, or passing percentages. Ordinal may include increasing, decreasing, or flat data trends or analyzing items that are below, on, or over budget.

Data Dashboard

When you are putting your visuals together or developing your transparency dashboard, remember to follow these best practices:

  • The most important visual should be displayed on the top or top-left of the page
  • Legends should be positioned near the visual views
  • Avoid using multiple color schemes on a single dashboard
  • Use six or less views in a dashboard
  • If possible, provide interactivity

As you prepare for upcoming committee meetings, board presentations, or long-term planning discussions, apply these tips to ensure your message is being conveyed effectively and efficiently.

Track More Than Just Technology With Your District’s Asset Management System

At the onset of COVID-19, many districts scrambled to move to a 1:1 device distribution model. A huge stepping-stone to being able to hand out technology tools for remote learning, such as laptops and tablets was having them all inventoried in the first place.

If a school were to hand out technology assets with no way to know which made their way safely back into the building — whenever that time came — how could a technology department confidently say that it was safeguarding district resources?

Naturally, asset and inventory management became a major stressor for leaders in K-12 technology.

In those early days of the crisis, when most school employees and students were in their homes, disconnected from one another and their normal teaching and learning routines, many technology teams were in their school buildings: all-hands-on-deck, sorting, counting, tagging, and listing. In some districts, teachers and support staff were ultimately called in to help with the transition.

Solving the inventory issue – the hard way

Through time, effort, and painstaking diligence, so many technology teams across the country successfully got remote learning tools into the hands of students, who, in many instances, held the responsibility of taking care of a laptop that wasn’t truly theirs for the first time. Seniors in high school all the way down to the wee ones in elementary school (and their parents and guardians) gained a technology tool in their home.

The effort to get there wasn’t an easy one, though. Many technology teams tackled the challenge by creating spreadsheets in which every detail had to be manually entered and updated. In turn, this data-entry and manual updating process became a full-time heavy lift for certain employees.

 

Hand-picked Content for You:

How School Tech and Finance Departments Can Work Together to Create Impact
Read Now

Solving the inventory issue – the easy way!

Remote learning was an instigator for districts across the country to get more organized about their technology asset management, and that meant investing in solutions that helped them automate the inventory process to:

  • Increase efficiency of managing tech assets
  • Increase the reliability of data — and thereby the team’s confidence in reporting
  • Gain real-time visibility into inventory at any moment, from anywhere
  • Reduce time spent conducting audits and producing reports

While tracking and maintaining technology assets has become second nature for most school districts, many can do more to take advantage of the full spectrum of their asset management capabilities.
The Complete Guide to Device Lifecycle Management

Tracking More Than Just Technology

Asset management systems can be used to track so much more than just technology assets, ensuring that items that are not tracked in an ERP system are still accounted for. School is a joyful place, and when students and staff collaborate to create something — well, things get moved.

Maybe the theatre club needed an easel for their stage set. There’s always one in the art room! Maybe tables needed to be set up in the auditorium for a showcase, and they came from all over the building. Maybe a quintet from the orchestra played welcoming music to start the day — and an instrument got left behind.

Schools feel like homes to so many of the people who work and learn in them, but, of course, the assets of a school really belong to the district. A solution that helps you track and inventory all those assets and foster community keeps you stay in control — and that control should go beyond technology assets.

Items that are prime opportunities for automated inventory management are those used by kitchen, maintenance, and custodial staff, such as furniture, appliances, and larger equipment used for grounds work.

With an asset management system tracking more than just technology, district leaders:

  • Gain visibility into where each item is located in the district — at all times, from anywhere
  • Track funding sources to have a clear, at-the-ready report of the funding source that paid for each asset
  • Budget for the future with more knowledge about how things are used, how long they last, and where the best investments have been
  • Increase confidence and accountability for audits

Use our checklist to ensure your district is making the most of your asset management system.

Want to download this checklist for an easy reference guide? Download Now

Effective Dating & Conditional Workflows in Position Management

Behind the scenes at any school district, there are playmakers at work — including business officials who keep the gears moving. And behind those people? Their systems and processes. Tried and true methods get the job done, but innovations save time and elevate professionals in HR, Finance, and Payroll to higher-level insights, strategy, and stewardship. And that elevates a school district to stronger learning outcomes.

Human Capital Management (HCM) is an HR practice of creating an environment that supports people and optimizes their output based on their knowledge, skills, assets, preferences, and needs. Within HCM is a key element that separates roles from individuals, allowing for HR, Finance, and Payroll to work proactively on position management.

Without position management, vacancies can be a surprise and often go unfilled until it becomes an emergency. HR and Finance often find themselves at odds between yesterday’s hiring needs and today’s budget constraints. Onboarding can be cumbersome and once an employee is in the door, they’re sometimes left to their own best efforts.

With a position management plan, HR, Finance, and Payroll professionals excel beyond number-crunching, stapling, stacking, and manual data entry, to become strategists, advisors, and high-level playmakers. A quality plan serves as a bird’s eye view into the personnel landscape at your district and supports proactive, intentional work.

The Four Stages of a Position Management Plan

  1. Organizational mapping
  2. Designating information at the position level
  3. Planning and forecasting with effective dating
  4. Using conditional workflows for approvals, vacancies, and requests

Organizational mapping begins by collecting data on:

  • How many employees work in the district, and where they work
  • Which employees plan to vacate their role temporarily or permanently (planned leave, retirement, etc.)
  • Where those vacancies are and where the budget can support the roles
  • What the recruiting effort will look like to maintain quality staff in the district

 
Designating information at the position level means getting specific about what is expected of the personnel in each role. You wouldn’t field a team without first communicating what each player must accomplish to win, right?

With a half-developed position management plan, you already know which personnel gaps, opportunities, and needs exist. When you start taking addressing those gaps, opportunities, and needs — moving and shaking — you need two key processes in place to make it work: effective dating and conditional workflows.

Effective dating allows you to work in the past, present, and future. Without it, the only personnel information available to you is what is true on that very day. This means that your hands are tied — or you’ll be putting in a lot of extra hours — if a stakeholder asks for data and stats from prior years, or projections into coming years. It means that you don’t have the full scope of employee data at your fingertips for your own efforts to get strategic at a high level. Old spreadsheets pile up and manual analysis grows tedious.

Hand-picked content for you:

Same Day – Different Pay: Multiple Pay Scenarios in Schools

Effective dating helps you be proactive in managing the fluidity of positions in a school as teachers take on different roles throughout the year, such as:

  1. Sports coach for one or more seasons
  2. After-school academic support advisor
  3. Club leader
  4. School-sponsored tutor
  5. Grade or subject team lead
  6. Summer school instructor

Add-on roles like these mean that stipends are tacked onto salaries at different variables and timeframes throughout the year. And of course, sometimes unexpected staffing issues pop up. Take Ms. R, who is one week into coaching the middle school soccer team when she injures her leg doing work around the house. Mr. K says he’ll take over until she’s more comfortable. With effective dating, this very human (we all fall sometimes!) personnel matter can play out naturally, and the appropriate role-based dates can be assigned at any time, even after the fact (in this case, when it’s known whether or not Ms. R will resume coaching).

Looking into the future can be even more important than seeing the past. With a clear view of the organizational map and position-level designations, the grasp of HR and Finance on personnel needs grows as well. With effective dating, you can date a vacancy that you know is coming (planned leave, retirement, etc.) and begin the approval process for hiring long before it becomes a scramble to fill the classroom.

“Get strategic, intentional, and — here’s the big one — less stressed.”

Conditional Workflows for Approvals, Vacancies, and Requests

So, let’s say you begin that approval process for hiring. What does it look like? There’s the old way, and then there’s the more efficient way, supported by conditional workflows. In the old way, a seasoned HR professional, Amy, has been manually processing approvals for years:

  1. She prints the form
  2. She walks the halls over the course of a few days, seeking signatures from the principal, Finance officer, and department chair
  3. She catches the Finance officer on day one, department chair on day two, and principal on day three (after an email thread, of course)
  4. She stays late a few days during the week, finishing up work that didn’t get done during the day

It’s not that Amy doesn’t want to say hello to colleagues or get a few steps in — it’s just that time-consuming, unsuccessful laps in the hallway pour her valuable time down the drain. She’d rather choose where to take that walk — say, in her own neighborhood after the workday is done.

Hand-picked content for you:

Multiple Pay Scenarios in One System

A Better Way

With conditional workflows, approvals become part of an automated process. Each stakeholder in the role is included in the workflow and receives an alert when it’s time to review the role, materials, and give approval. HR and Finance are connected, with all the pertinent information in a shared space to work from, together. And as for Amy’s hellos, well, they feel a lot better when the work is getting done.

Conditional workflows make room for easy human interaction by connecting all the people in the hiring process. In fact, they do a few things:

  1. Break down repetitive tasks into a logical sequence
  2. Help HR and Finance process data more easily
  3. Eliminate bottlenecks in recruiting, so stellar candidates are hired and onboarded faster

A strong position management plan in place gives time and power back to HR, Finance, and Payroll professionals. Vacancies can be identified and filled early with a position management plan, and conditional workflows support the approval process so that the right hire can begin with confidence before it’s an emergency.

Hand-picked content for you:

Change Management in K-12: What You Need to Know

The right process enablement software that supports organizational mapping, role-based effective dating and details, and proactive recruiting, are powerful tools. It connects HR and Finance in invaluable ways to turn those professionals from number-crunchers and hallway-walkers to advisors and project champions.

Frontline can help you implement a position management plan at your district. Learn more here.

Talk Data To Me: Assessing the Health of Substitute Teacher Pools by State

The status of absence management within school districts throughout the pandemic has been a consistent topic on Talk Data to Me. As teacher absence rates have consistently climbed back to pre-COVID levels this school year, states have had varying success in rebuilding their substitute teacher pools and increasing the proportion of available substitutes who actively fill absences.

Hand-picked content for you:

Talk Data to Me: Why Substitute Engagement Matters More Than Ever This Year

We pooled data from over 6,000 school districts in 38 states and compared the district-average size of their substitute pools and working substitute percentage for the fall months of 2019, 2020, and 2021. The fall of 2019 was, of course, pre-pandemic. In the fall of 2020, school districts still found themselves amid COVID-related shutdowns, quarantines, and remote learning — all of which dramatically affected absence metrics. The fall of 2021 brought a slight return to pre-COVID levels as most school districts across the country returned to full-time in person learning.

So, did absence metrics return to where they were in the fall of 2019 as well?

  • Comparing the status of absence metrics for the fall of 2021 to the fall of 2020, we can see which states have had the best COVID recovery.
  • Comparing the status of absence metrics for this fall to the fall of 2019, we can see which states are closest to pre-pandemic levels.

Hand-picked content for you:

The Teacher Shortage, 2021 Edition

Which states have increased their substitute teacher pools the most?

To remedy substitute teacher shortages and to fill more classrooms, this blog series has consistently shared tips for increasing the size of substitute teacher pools and strategies for engaging available substitutes with the goal of increasing their willingness to work. The size of an active pool of substitutes, of course, impacts how easily districts are able to fill absences: the more available substitutes a district has, the greater the likelihood of being able to fill any absences that occur. Many different factors can impact the size of a district’s active sub pool, including locality and the effort and focus that organizations put into attracting substitutes.

Many different factors can impact the size of a district’s active sub pool, including locality and the effort and focus that organizations put into attracting substitutes.

Data from the Frontline Research & Learning Institute — which, at a national level, is representative of school districts throughout the United States — shows that between 2019 and 2021, substitute teacher pools have increased in 13 states on average, while 24 states have smaller pools. In this data, substitutes included in these pools are those who have been marked as “active” by an administrator.

Note: In each of the below maps, only states with a sample of 25 or more districts for each year from 2019-2021 are included.

The following map shows which in which states districts’ active substitute pools have experienced the strongest rebounds since the fall of 2020:

 

Hand-picked content for you:

Talk Data to Me: The Impact of Substitute Pay on Fill Rate

Which states have the largest proportion of their substitute pools actively filling classrooms?

Of course, having a large roster of substitute teachers only helps if those substitutes actively help to fill vacancies in classrooms. Every state in our analysis has a smaller proportion of their available substitutes actively filling absences this fall compared to the fall of 2019, although some states are seeing a smaller drop than others.

Below, you can see how the percentage of working substitutes in the fall of 2021 compares to that from a year earlier. “But is that really an accurate representation?” you might ask, since some districts still operated virtually in fall 2020. But most districts had returned at this point to in-person learning, which is supported by a substantial rise in the number of absences seeking substitutes, and so the working substitute percentage still appears to be valid.

The causes of the state-to-state differences in these absence metrics are beyond the scope of this blog, but they highlight a vital issue: at a time when caseloads continue to rise and COVID is having an impact on both student and staff attendance, it’s increasingly important to consider how to not only grow your substitute pool, but entice them to accept jobs in your district as well.

If your substitute pool contains a large percentage of non-working substitutes, what can you do about it?

It goes without saying that labor market challenges affect schools as well as many other industries. Hospitals, airlines, and even restaurants are having staffing challenges at the moment.

Spring Grove Area School District in rural Pennsylvania has taken an innovative approach to attracting substitutes. Recognizing that every day may feel like the first day at a new job for substitutes, the HR team at Spring Grove works hard to make their district the place where substitutes in the area want to work.

To hear how they do it, how it impacts fill rates, teacher morale, and the quality of students’ education, check out this podcast.

5 Ways Collaboration Between Tech and Finance Departments Can Create an Impact

Friction between tech and finance offices has historically stemmed from the business office’s need to maximize the use of any funds available to the greatest educational gain to support learning and teaching, while technology departments often found it difficult to prove the return on investment — to show explicitly that the purchase of a laptop or tablet will increase or grow learning by a certain percentage.

As technology continues to permeate all aspects of the business of a school district and with the influx of federal dollars supporting the switch to a 1:1 distribution model as a result of COVID-19, there are even more opportunities for technology and finance departments to work closely to achieve desired learning objectives.

Beyond the rewards that often follow a positive working relationship, below are five ways your district could benefit from a close working relationship between the two offices.

1.Improving tracking and reporting

With greater funding at a local, state, and federal level, it is important now more than ever that the business and technology departments collaborate to ensure that assets purchased with funds such as CARES, ESSER, E-Rate and ECF are being used as intended.

It is vital that districts have the ability to track the entire lifecycle of an asset from purchase to disposal, and can easily report on this data when audited.

While the CTO or technology department may decide how best to collect and distribute technology assets to students, teachers, and staff, the finance department is accountable for compliance with funding laws, making it essential for the finance department to identify the information they need and communicate that to the technology department.

If your district uses an asset management system, tech and finance can make reporting easier for everyone by tracking district assets beyond technology. For example, tagging items purchased with special education funding will ease the burden of reporting. In order for this practice to work, you need to ensure a close working relationship between a CFO and the technology office to make sure everyone across a district is using the same processes and procedures for tracking all assets in a district.

Did you know? An asset management system could make financial reporting easier for your district.

2. Advancing strategic initiatives

Understanding current and future district needs is critical to making progress on strategic initiatives, and a close working relationship between a CFO and a CTO or CIO can help everyone at your district articulate those needs. Of course, your district’s needs are likely driven by school, district, or even state goals. If your business and technology departments have a solid mutual understanding of each department’s goals — especially where they overlap — everyone’s needs and priorities become clearer.

If your technology department is tasked with identifying available technology that would increase interoperability between systems, automate workflows, and reduce manual processes, their understanding of the business office’s needs will allow them to better advise their finance department on the purchase. For example, one-time federal funds may best be used to modernize or replace older systems, which may improve long-term savings, and have an impact far beyond their immediate departments.

You may enjoy this handpicked content:

Make the Most of Stimulus Funds: Best Practices for Budgeting

3. Creating equitable home and school access to tech and internet

The pandemic highlighted the glaring difference in access to technology from one home to the next. But neither finance nor the business office can solve that problem in a silo. Working together, the technology and finance department can identify and invest in technology that will best meet the needs for all students to ensure an optimal learning environment.

For example, if the school needs to purchase hotspots for students that do not have internet at home, the CTO can identify the devices that best meet the technical requirements of the devices and programs students will be using at home while a CFO would be able to identify the funds best used to make the purchase. Together, they can make a difference in student learning in a very real way.

You may enjoy this handpicked content:

Quiz: The If/Then Business Officials’ Challenge

4. Increasing cyber security

An increase in communication among CFOs and CIOs is essential in preventing cyberattacks. As technology across all departments in a district continues to grow, operating in a vacuum could potentially make a district a desirable target.

For example, should a district change a core function within the office — such as outsourcing rather than doing in-house — this changes an organization’s IT functionality. Working with the IT department ensures that no vulnerabilities are created. Additionally, working with technology to provide security programs and ensure devices are regularly updated will reduce the risk of an attack. Frequent communication between these departments is vital in ensuring the safety of district-wide data.

You may enjoy this handpicked content:

Cyber-Attack at Springland City Schools
Read the fictional story inspired by real events

5. Enhancing instruction

Working together to consider how the district will continue to support, maintain, train, and service the number of devices, systems, and applications that a district will need going forward is absolutely necessary.

At any given time, a district needs to ensure that there is a sufficient reserve of working devices and staff available to perform repairs or provide support to minimize the impact on instruction. Additionally, a close alliance ensure that technology asset reserves and technician staff is the right size for the future.

As funds provided to school districts for the use of technology continue to grow, it will become even more important that the business office and technology departments work together to ensure funds are used wisely and in a way that will create the biggest impact.

How Talent Data Can Lead to Better Decision-Making for K-12 Leaders

 A 2018 Frontline Research & Learning Institute white paper, “Balancing the Equation,” proposed a vision for strategic human capital management (HCM) characterized by a holistic approach to building and maintaining a high-performing employee culture.

It suggested:

  • Leaders would make data-driven decisions aligned to their school system’s strategic objectives.
  • Teams would set goals collaboratively.
  • Teams would measure progress towards goals using dat and benchmarks.
  • Team leaders routinely surface opportunities for improvement in employee engagement, efficiency, and effectiveness.

A commitment to transforming data insights into action — supported by easy-to-use systems — helps district and team leaders achieve this vision for strategic HCM.

We can learn even more about how to effectively implement this vision by taking a look at how it’s taken shape at Caledonia Community Schools.

Caledonia Community Schools’ Optimized HCM Program

Caledonia Community Schools is a high-performing suburban/rural district not far from Grand Rapids, Michigan, focused on creating a positive learning environment for all students.

When city dwellers moved to the suburbs at higher than anticipated rates, Caledonia found itself with growing pains — but they remained steadfast in their goal on academic excellence, achieved in part through optimized HCM. District leaders updated their recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training practices to continue to attract high-quality employees to their schools.

A Connected Talent Management System

The first step was to improve the hiring and onboarding processes for HR. As part of a consortium of 23 districts using online recruiting and hiring solutions, Caledonia had access to a broader pool of candidates than standalone recruiting systems. With more applicants, they needed to find a way to sort and track their top choices.

“As soon as a candidate is selected, their application is uploaded to their HR portal. References are completed separately and also saved to the HR portal once the onboarding process is complete.”

Laurie King, HR Assistant.Caledonia Community Schools

Having a talent management system designed for K-12 organizations, including the highest level of security, has been a major asset for every department, especially during COVID-19. Back when they were doing a lot of work manually, binders or folders kept in offices would not have been accessible to staff forced to work at home. But with a new talent management system, it is easy to access data remotely. Payroll still gets processed on time, substitutes are hired when needed, and professional growth is available to teachers and easy to track.

Their connected talent management system now manages all employee records, allowing them to synchronize their hiring, professional growth, and absences. They’re no longer using different systems in each department and have revolutionized and streamlined their processes with workflow enhancements. Their new talent management system puts data within easy reach of all users from district administrators to employees themselves, when and where they need it.

Following Caledonia’s strategic plan for growth involved shifting schedules and changing grade-level configurations. The pandemic added another twist when teachers unexpectedly retired or went on leave and substitutes were hard to find. Fortunately, with the absence management component of their new talent management system already in place, the HR department is able to help manage the astronomical number of staff changes.

“Everyone’s schedules are set. When there’s a holiday, it’s already pre-set in the talent management system.”

Sara DeVries, Director of Finance and Business Services
Caledonia Community Schools

Grayson County Public Schools in Independence, VA is another district that is transforming HCM processes through the use of a connected talent management system. Prior to implementing their system, human resources and payroll had to generate many complex reports and spend a lot of time going through individual employee files to make updates. Grayson County implemented a new talent management system and gained more efficiencies by maximizing their resources and expediting their processes.

“We now have a comprehensive view of all employees and staff with proactive notifications to keep our records current as well as comparative data and historical information to support our budget and planning needs.”

Amy Vaughan, Human Resources Clerk and Marlee Bertram, Deputy Payroll Clerk
Grayson County School District

The above article is an executive summary to “Balancing the Equation,” updated for 2024. If you’d like to read the full white paper, you can download it here.

The Frontline Research & Learning Institute recognizes that continued challenges in K-12, including teacher shortages and COVID-19, have impacted the way schools, districts and states are supporting educators and other key personnel. Even with these challenges, we’re seeing great progress.

The organizations referenced within are using solutions that are part of Frontline Education’s human capital management suite to gain efficiencies and streamline their HCM processes. To learn more visit www.FrontlineEducation.com.