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3 Rules for Constructing and Communicating Your Financial Story to Stakeholders

One common thread that every good story has embedded into it is context. Without context, it doesn’t make sense why Hansel and Gretel are lost in the woods, why Peter Pan never ages, or what Harry Potter’s deal is. Context provides depth and a frame of reference to an otherwise flat story.

School administrators across the country are finding that a powerful and effective way to communicate their district’s financials to stakeholders is through telling their district’s “story” with data and visuals. Starting the school year with a State of the District report is increasingly becoming a popular way to provide the needed context for helping a community understand and appreciate the financial management of their school district.

Just like telling any good story, developing a State of the District report requires that the storyteller follow 3 simple rules:

  • Know your audience
  • Know what they need to know
  • Tell it simply

Know Your Audience

When constructing the State of the District report, it’s important to first identify your audience. Educating local stakeholders on the basics of school business finance looks different than familiarizing a new school board member on the history of the district. Often these two can converge, but even when they do, the level of detail needed to inform the audience looks different.

Avoid falling into the common trap at this stage of assuming your audience knows more than it does!  Be sure to include key foundational information, no matter how obvious it seems, which leads into the second rule…

Know What They Need to Know

If rising enrollment was the precursor to increasing staff levels, which drove up personnel costs from last year, include that in the presentation. If changes to the state funding model were determinate to changes the district made in program offerings, include that as well. These might be obvious to administration, but they aren’t necessarily to stakeholders, so map out the paths to decisions made. Opening up your data in this way also increases transparency and builds trust.

To start, make a list of the key data points someone would be interested in learning and understanding about the district: the where, when, why, and how. At the same time, keep in mind that too much data can lead down the wrong path, which is why the third rule is so important…

Tell It Simply

Simplicity is often the key to any stakeholder communication. The US Navy started saying K.I.S.S. (“Keep It Simple Stupid”) in the 1960’s. Henry David Thoreau said “Simplify, simplify.” And you’ve heard the phrase, “Explain it like you’re talking to a 2nd grader.” The idea is the same: simple is better, less is more.

When constructing an outline of what the audience needs to know, cut out the unnecessary and remove the distractions. If what is being said or shown takes more attention away rather than enhancing the ability to understand the situation, then don’t include it. This can be difficult at times because some information might be important to share, but keep in mind that the story is meant to provide insights that might lead to questions and further discussions.

Additionally, simplification doesn’t just mean deciding what data to include and not include, it also looks at the type of content used in the presentation to help your community appreciate the state of your district. To read more on what this looks like and why it is so important, see this post, “I Love My Schools: Make it Easy for Your Community to Appreciate the State of Your District.” It does a great job explaining how to show the story you want them to see by using analytical capabilities in your presentation.

The Resolution

There’s nothing worse than jumping into a great or funny story halfway through, without the context to understand what’s going on, and feeling left out of the conversation or needing to play catch up. If information gaps aren’t filled in with the proper context, people will usually fill them in on their own. A good State of the District presentation will provide that context to your audience to communicate your financial story, and help create a positive foundation for future discussions predicated on that information.

Communicate Your Financial Story

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

 

I Love My Schools: Make it Easy for Your Community to Appreciate the State of Your District

School spirit is a powerful force. Everyone loves to cheer for the successes of their sports teams, fine arts programs, test scores, and academic rankings.

It’s time to set yourself up to get a few of those “way to go’s” by helping your community understand and appreciate the financial management of their school district.

The best way to achieve this goal is to make it easy for your stakeholders to understand key financial data without a degree in accounting.

The Cliché is True

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a well-known cliché, but it’s also true because of the way the human brain is wired. An MIT study finds that people can identify images in as little as 13 milliseconds. Our minds are also better at remembering visuals than words and figures.

You can take advantage of our brains’ craving for visuals by presenting data in a way that has meaning and relevance for your team, board, teachers, support staff, taxpayers, and students.

Data is Everywhere

Currently, most school district financial data is housed in accounting systems or a series of spreadsheets. Administrators may not have an easy way to build narratives illustrating the effects of certain decisions or how fluctuating funding sources impacted cash reserves. A lot of time is often spent drawing correlations between line items and determining how to best communicate outcomes or provide general context for stakeholders.

With so many pieces of information housed in various systems, how do you analyze and simplify all the variables that affect how you make financial decisions and present it in a way that tells a visual story?

Determine What Goes in Your Scorecard

First, it’s important to identify the key drivers for expenses and revenues that will affect your budget over the next few years. What do your stakeholders need to understand about those drivers? How would you like them to track your progress over time? What outside influences should they consider?

With that up front work done, it’s easier to provide a consistent story every time that enables stakeholders to see progress and better understand and support difficult decisions.

Show the Story You Want Them to See

Now it’s time to add visuals to how you present the financial status of your school district by adding analytic capabilities to your toolbox.

All the data from various sources you’ve identified as important, can be collected and input into an analytical software tool that enables you to generate powerful, striking charts and visuals very quickly. You can easily compare and contrast different scenarios and show why you made certain decisions.

You can create a standard set of visuals that illustrate progress in key categories as well as produce diagrams at a moment’s notice to answer questions.

Share Your Success

An analytics tool enables you to make connections between line items and inputs from all the data sources that impact your finances. Questions about the budget can be anticipated and you can proactively produce visuals that tell a consistent story over time.

Once your stakeholders can understand how and why your district’s finances are managed, they will be your biggest cheerleaders.

Communicate Your Financial Story

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

 

Five Steps to Creating Your School’s Brand

As the parent of a first grader and a taxpayer, I’ve learned more than I could have ever imagined about the intricacies of the public school system — from how students are assessed in terms of readiness to the increasing competition for students and the taxpayer dollars they bring. These experiences drive my passion for advocating for data analytics to make better decisions for students and our learning communities.

As a veteran marketer, I’m also intrigued by the idea of using data analytics to build a school’s brand. Interestingly enough, there are many traditional business marketing practices incorporating data, which a school can use to build and enhance their brand. Today, I’ll discuss what a brand is and tips for approaching the creation (or recreation) of your school’s brand.

How to Build a Brand

A brand is more than just a logo or tagline. It is also about the feeling and the perception your organization creates in the consumer’s mind when they see your name and logo. Specifically, a brand reinforces and reminds students and the community of immediate and future goals, builds connections and perceptions with the students and the school community, and creates a sense of ownership and community for the campus. A brand is your identity: the values, culture, and personality that distinguish your school from any other.

Step 1: Define Your Brand Values

The first step in creating your brand is to define your unique value proposition. During this stage, it’s important to seek feedback from staff related to such questions as:

“What’s important to you?”

“Who are we now or where are we now?”

“Who do we want to be?”

“What are our strategic goals?”

After you gather feedback, it’s then important to gain agreement across the organization. I suggest organizing a brainstorming session where you list your values and prioritize them based on what you believe in and want your organization to stand for. Think of your values in terms of words that could represent them and your organization. Ensure input is integrated from across the team and then align upon six to eight words or phrases that define your brand.

Step 2: Consistently Deliver on the Promise

Step 2 is about being consistent and repetitive in displaying your brand’s values in everything you do. Your core brand values should drive everything everyone does in the organization. Consistency sets expectations and reliance on what you offer, thereby reinforcing your brand.

Step 3: Create Your Name and Logo

Most established school districts already have a name and logo, but there is often an opportunity to recreate these brand elements based on how your organization has evolved. When thinking about a name, consider names that are easily spelled and pronounced, have less words for memorability and describe what you do. A logo should be recognizable and memorable, as well as relevant. It should convey your brand’s personality both visually and emotionally.

Step 4: Create and Integrate Your Distinct Voice

Every interaction — written and verbal — with students, employees, board members, and community members should have a set tone of voice. Your voice should be consistent across every interaction to make an impact on the experience people have with your brand.

Step 5: Build Your Brand Though Good Citizenship and Advocacy

When you establish your brand and parents understand that they and their kids are part of it, they then want to share. Part of building your brand is also involving and engaging the community, seeking brand champions among that audience, and building connections.

In addition to these steps, I also recommend the book BrandEd: Tell Your Story, Build Relationships and Empower Learning by Trish Rubin and Eric Sheninger.  Rubin, a former educator now marketing consultant, believes it’s up to school leaders to now become “storytellers in chief” by defining their school’s brand. Rubin and Sheninger’s book provides a step-by-step framework to the nuances of spreading good school news and winning support.

Analyzing Monthly Financials to Better Manage Your Annual Budget

District finance leaders today face rising costs, enrollment shifts, and the phase-out of ESSER funds — all while maintaining balanced budgets. That’s why monthly financial analysis and operational forecasting have become essential. By pairing current data with historical trends, districts can adjust faster, make smarter midyear decisions, and better protect resources for classrooms.

Monthly Financial Analysis

With inflation, labor costs, and unpredictable state funding, K-12 business offices now rely on monthly forecasts to maintain control and ensure accuracy. Instead of just closing the books on a month, operational forecasting takes advantage of the treasure trove of financial data school districts have from previous years and combines it with current information to make timely updates to the budget forecast and better predict what is needed to support the next one to five fiscal years.

1. Monthly Budgets

Operational forecasting enables a school district to create budgets for each month based on historical trends that incorporate actuals as a percentage of the total to produce a monthly average.

It requires analyzing historical trends to uncover correlations between financial and operating data. For example, do revenues and expenditures tend to vary with the level of economic activity (CPI), or are they independent of business cycles?

Five or more years of historical data is ideal to the recognition of anomalous events and patterns with exponential smoothing of trend percentages.

2. Actuals vs Budgets

Monthly financial reporting shows the district’s progress in implementing the budget by evaluating the current month’s performance (MTD) and the year-to-date budget (YTD) with comparisons of what was budgeted versus what actually occurred.

It’s also important to compare prior years’ actuals to budget and incorporate what is learned from trend analysis to make adjustments as needed to the remainder of the fiscal year.

3. Comparative Analysis

Monthly financial reporting is also an opportunity to implement a best practice of comparing current data against target goals for both MTD and YTD, as well as multi-year evaluations.

4. Variance Analysis

Modern analytics tools can now flag anomalies in real time, reducing month-end surprises and strengthening board reporting.

It’s also critical to understand why there are variances in the actuals versus what was planned in the budget to more accurately measure financial performance and proactively identify potential future budget variance.

Then a school district is better able to reallocate funds from the current year to address the unexpected or fund priority initiatives. By maintaining control over expenses, the team can create year-end estimates and anticipate projected year-end variances from the budget.

Projected Year-End Position

In 2025, more districts are adopting rolling forecasts — continuously updating their outlook every month to reflect actuals and evolving economic indicators.

The Right Tools Make the Difference

Operational forecasting requires being able to model and analyze “what if?” scenarios to identify the cause of changes, the impact of the change, and what action should be taken.

Traditional financial systems geared for school districts often stand in the way. They are great for recording transactions. But, to enable accurate operational forecasting requires analysis of current and historical data, something legacy solutions are ill equipped to handle.

Today’s budgeting tools must go beyond data entry to deliver predictive insights and visual dashboards. With Frontline Budget & Financial Planning Analytics, districts can automatically sync monthly transactions, run “what-if” models, and share visual reports that align finance and instruction leaders around the same goals.

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3 Ways that a GIS Tool Can Help with Enrollment Trend Analysis

As schools collect and analyze large amounts of data to increase efficiencies and optimize resources, Geographic Information System (GIS) tools are not always the first that come to mind. The ways that geo-spatial data could benefit your district might not be obvious, but there are new project ideas arising every day which capitalize on the power of seeing your student information on a map. One of the main uses for this type of system is analyzing your shifting enrollment and identifying trends before they become an issue. Here are three ways that a GIS tool can help you with enrollment trend analysis.

Visualize your shifting enrollment over time

One of the most powerful aspects of being able to load your data onto a map and view it geographically is the ability to query this data in order to locate specific subsets of students. By including data pertaining to enrollment dates and withdrawal dates, districts can visually analyze, in real time, how their population is shifting over time.

This is the kind of insight you could not easily gather from a spreadsheet or data table. By looking at a map of your new students, you may find, for example, that a particular neighborhood seems to be growing as a result of new developments. Or, you might find that a particular subdivision seems to be attracting a large number of young families with small children. This type of insight will allow you to plan for potential overcrowding in the near future, as well as what the current impact is on your buildings and staff. This same approach can be applied to a declining enrollment.

Analyze demographic changes and new service requirements

As you work through visualizing your shifting enrollment and identifying pockets of students, having demographic data in your GIS tool allows for that next level analysis to help you better understand who those students are. With that, you can now run statistics on your new students in order to identify instances where buildings may need additional services to accommodate this new influx. Whether it’s an increase in special education needs or a higher number of ELL students, tracking these demographic changes will allow you to stay one step ahead of your district’s needs and reallocate the proper resources where they will be needed.

Simulate potential solutions and their effectiveness

As you work through this analysis, you may find that the only real solution to your shifting enrollment will be to re-align your boundaries, close a building and consolidate students, or build a new building. GIS tools provide a great sandbox for you to work in as you develop possible changes and evaluate their effectiveness. By loading your current boundaries onto the map with your student data, you can begin manipulating those boundaries and run scenario analysis using student statistics to create a simulation for each of your potential solutions. Having this real time information allows for an easier re-districting experience and enhanced communication throughout the process. We often hear district leaders talk about the tremendous insights they have gained by using a GIS tool internally, rather than the traditional methods of spreading paper maps on a conference table or hiring an outside consultant.

GIS, though a lesser-known tool, continues to provide districts with a very effective analytical solution to an assortment of issues they may be facing. As more and more districts begin to find unique applications of GIS, it’s worth asking: are you using this powerful technology to your advantage?

Multiyear Financial Projections: An Essential Undertaking

In this era of limited resources and continued financial strain, school business officials need to combine accounting and analysis, along with compelling communication skills, to meet the present and future needs of their organizations.

The multiyear projection is one of the most critical working documents the school business office produces. When done well, the multiyear projection becomes a living instrument that speaks with numbers and pictures and focuses internal and external stakeholders on the key opportunities and issues facing the district.

Elements of a K-12 Financial Plan Projection

Operational or Strategic?

A well-constructed multiyear projection should serve both operational and strategic functions.

From an operational perspective, the multiyear projection should include enough detail to be useful for budgeting and cash flow planning. If you manage your district’s investment portfolio, the multiyear projection will help define the long-term investment opportunities or, in some cases, short-term borrowing needs. You should be able to use data from the multiyear projection in internal or external reports or as a foundational support document for your bond ratings or continuing disclosure obligations.

From a strategic perspective, the multiyear projection should be a centerpiece for financial and budget decisions related to future educational services and infrastructure improvements.

It is important to consider how internal and external stakeholders will engage with the output of your multiyear projection. When setting up your multiyear projection model or evaluating a third-party application, consider the kinds of reports you need. You will be using your multiyear projection as a communications vehicle, so your reports must speak to a wide range of audiences on both operational and strategic issues.

Elective or Required?

Maintaining an multiyear projection may be an elective task within your state; however, some states require school districts to submit a financial forecast as a scheduled compliance task. In those states, the required projection period is generally three to five years. Even when optional, local governments commonly use a five-year period for their projections.

In states that require an multiyear projection, districts typically submit their projection using a specific state-developed form. Many of those state forms are unsuitable for use in strategic discussions with your board or community as they have limited strategic or communications value. In fact, presenting a compliance document with 100 or more pages may confuse more people than it engages.

Take the time to produce an executive summary of the data with useful charts and dashboards. Your report will more likely be understood if it is delivered in a graphics-rich format.

How to Use the Multiyear Projections

The multiyear projection forecast becomes the central tool in financial discussions with governance boards. After the governance board members become familiar with the mechanics of the forecast and have access to their preferred data views, they will likely ask the question, “How does this affect our multiyear projection?” By extending the financial forecast further into the future, boards focus more on growth and sustainability. The multiyear projection can provide a board with more insight and certainty in decisions and subsequently increase the community’s confidence in those decisions — and in the board itself.

The best forecasting models allow you to simulate “what-if” scenarios on demand and quickly and confidently answer questions about new investments and other affordability issues with a longer-term perspective. Additionally, you can use scenario comparisons and data visualization to engage decision makers and stakeholders with graphics that increase their understanding and accelerate their decisions. The ability to answer difficult financial questions quickly and confidently is an invaluable feature.

The Critical Components of a Multiyear Projection

As you develop your multiyear projection, focus your effort in four key areas:

  • The source and structure of the foundational data. If you are using your budget structure for the projection, determine the level of granularity that you want to use to support decision making.
  • The assumptions and variables that will drive future revenues and expenses. Understanding the key variables and their relative impact on financial outcomes is critical.
  • The reporting output that people can understand. Your audience may represent a wide spectrum of experience and analytical perspectives. Supporting your projection with both tabular and graphical data is important to improve understanding and engagement.
  • The ability to simulate and track changes. In addition to being able to create what-if scenarios, you will need an airtight process of cataloguing the changes that have been introduced to each simulation so you have a clean audit trail for each scenario.
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When Revenues Are Volatile

You may be in a position where your revenues are subject to volatile political swings, or your revenues may be under pressure because of local tax constraints. In such cases of revenue uncertainty, you can still benefit from an multiyear projection.

Focus on the expense side of the forecast. When you have loaded the desired expense components to support a required or the visionary level of programming, you will be in a position to perform a basic financial gap analysis. Use the expense side of your multiyear projection to calculate the funding level required to provide the services. The presentation and the talking points for this analysis are relatively simple and might sound like this: “If we continue at this current level of funding, we will be unable to provide the types of services that our community is seeking. To provide this higher level of service, we need X dollars more in funding over a five-year period.”

The financial gap analysis then becomes a great communication tool with stakeholders, including taxpayers, parents of students, legislators, elected leaders, and employees of the local government.

You may be in a situation where the likelihood of additional funding is remote, bringing up the question of the value of the exercise. But without a clear definition of the preferred level of programming, it will be difficult to communicate and engage critical stakeholders in a way that eventually achieves your goals. Additionally, as you look forward and begin to consider the potential infrastructure and staffing requirements of the multiyear projection, you may gain other strategic insights regarding the current state of your organization.

New Concepts in Financial Projections

Twenty years ago, Excel spreadsheets revolutionized the forecasting process. Spreadsheets remain a valuable financial analysis tool today, but high-performing public- and private-sector entities are now using database technology to create and manage their forecasts.

Databases can be used to manage large file structures and easily compare multiple complex budget scenarios. Additionally, the increased processing capacity allows you to use your entire general ledger with the ability to aggregate and work with the data at different levels and in different views. Applications with “in-memory” data processing can convert your financial history and your projection into a giant pivot table that is much faster and easier to use than an Excel spreadsheet.

By capturing the entire general ledger in the system, you can create projections down to the lowest level of detail in your chart of accounts. This expanded processing capacity may allow you to consolidate your budgeting and forecasting projects into a single project. In other words, if your multiyear projection includes all of the accounts in your general ledger, you will be creating next year’s budget as you finalize your forecast. In contrast, when you execute the multiyear projection with aggregated annual financial report data, you may lose the details that you need for your budgeting process.

The Long-Term Impact

Many school districts use an multiyear projection as a focal point for their strategic planning. A well-constructed and documented forecast not only assists in the planning and decision making, but also can establish a professional brand for the district that provides significant value over time. School business officials who lead this charge and demonstrate command over their district’s financial data enjoy increased levels of internal and external support and can serve their communities at the highest level possible.

 

4 Tips to Optimizing Peer Comparisons with Data

As a sports fan, I enjoy the common debate over who is the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan or LeBron James. Sports is a unique situation in that oftentimes, athletes do not have the luxury to choose who they are compared to. Performance, standards, history, and experience are not always accounted for when making such comparisons.

Unlike sports, school district leaders find themselves in a different position: they do often have the ability to choose who they will compare their organization to. With that choice can come the temptation to compare against peers that seem to perform similarly or maybe not as well as your district in certain areas. In doing this though, you potentially miss out on many benefits associated with optimizing peer comparison data. To realize the full benefits of benchmarking, here are some tips for optimizing the process:


Move beyond your region.

Many school districts tend to compare themselves only to their neighbors. Comparing regionally is helpful, and in many cases a necessity. However, I also encourage clients to also look across the state, or even nationwide, to find districts with similar enrollment, demographics, revenue, etc. Not only can finding ‘like’ peers be an educational exercise in and of itself, but having two groups with which to compare yourself (regional and ‘like’) can strengthen or challenge current views.

Another benefit of finding similar districts is that it can also help expose differences between your organization and your neighbors. It is all too easy to get into the habit of comparing yourself with the same districts you’ve always compared to. Showing your district’s stakeholders just how different you are — be it size, demographics, revenue, etc. — can build support for moving beyond borders in your benchmarking.


Think about your buildings.

While district-level comparisons are incredibly helpful, don’t stop there. How do your individual buildings compare with their own respective peers? Do you have a handle on how similar elementary buildings, for example, in the state are staffing, achieving, etc.? In many cases, each building within a district has its own needs, its own initiatives, and its own challenges. All the benefits realized from district-level comparison can be extended to each of the buildings in your district.


Be consistent.

Regardless of the criteria chosen for optimizing peer comparison data, be consistent with your method and approach. Clearly define your metrics and stick to them. Additionally, make sure these metrics are clearly communicated to all appropriate parties. Every methodology will have its limitations, but being clear and up front with what you did and did not factor in and why, will only build trust and confidence among stakeholders. Adhering to a methodology for peer group construction will also allow you to easily see how your peer group might change each year. No school district is static, which means some years a district may ‘qualify’ as a peer and other years it may not.


Aim high.

One last tip to forming peer groups at either-district-or building-level, is to compare against the best. For most, there are a handful of school districts like you who are ‘knocking it out of the park.’ While you might look like the lowest achieving among this group of districts, understanding what is happening differently at each of the ‘high achieving’ districts can provide insight as to how your own organization can improve. Identifying a path to your desired success is essential, and there is perhaps no easier way to learn how to navigate that path than by speaking to someone who has already traveled it. Aim high and see what the ‘best’ are doing already that you can emulate.



Take advantage of having the opportunity to choose your peer comparison group. Incorporating these tips into your peer comparison methodology will allow you more opportunities to make prudent decisions for the good of your organization and ultimately, the students you are serving.


The Value of a 5 Year Financial Projection: More Than Just a Spreadsheet

Executing a five-year financial projection can be a time consuming and complicated process — especially if you are starting the process for the first time. However, administrators that approach this type of project with a strategic perspective will understand that a financial projection is more than just a spreadsheet. A meaningful multi-year financial forecast can produce tremendous value for a school district — beyond the tables, charts, and graphs that are generated as output.

High-performing organizations look at financial projections as both a strategic process and as a valuable instrument. Furthermore, they don’t view a financial forecast as a static document that is filed on a shelf after execution. Rather, they understand that a five-year projection is a dynamic mechanism that facilitates organizational growth and improvement.

A Strategic Process

Let’s look at some of the main benefits of looking at a five-year forecast as a process that enables:

  • Collection and organization of important information
  • Assessment of key variables that will impact the organization
  • Collaboration with internal and external stakeholders

The process of developing a multi-year forecast requires time and resources. As a first step, collecting information and input from key areas of the district is critical for success. Spending sufficient time to assess and discuss the key drivers for revenues and expenses with stakeholder groups will help improve the accuracy of the projection. Additionally, collaboration between administrators allows valuable perspective to be gained and incorporated into the forecast, while at the same time increasing the level of buy-in for a finalized plan.

A Valuable Instrument

Now, let’s turn to the benefits of using a five-year forecast as an instrument that facilitates:

  • Measurement of historical performance
  • Strategic alignment of resources
  • Communication of challenges and opportunities

Many times, the process of looking forward can be enhanced by looking backward. Using historical data to inform future assumptions can be valuable. Historical review also provides an opportunity to examine performance of budget vs. actuals.

Depending on the financial strength of the organization, the forecast may initiate valuable discussions and decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources. Organizations can use the forecast as an instrument to define priorities and service levels with sustainability insight. Further, a projection model that allows for the modeling of “what-if” scenarios can assist in modeling the optimal alignment of resources.

School districts have often been asked to “do more with less” while also being able to make decisions with 20/20 foresight. A well-constructed financial projection can facilitate deeper understanding and communication with stakeholders around organizational challenges and opportunities.

Additional Benefits

Many organizations look at forecasting as a year-round function that seeks to continually fine-tune and adjust the forecast to current information.

By looking at the projection as a perpetual and dynamic process, organizations can achieve enjoy numerous benefits including:

  • Efficiencies in the budgeting process
  • Elevated performance from on-going benchmarking of plans vs. outcomes
  • Increased understanding of key drivers and risk metrics
  • Enhanced communication of objectives with internal staff
  • Improved organizational brand through transparency and accountability

Historically, developing a budget and developing a five-year forecast were tackled as two separate projects. Some would use elements of the five-year plan to inform areas of the budget. But in many cases, an unintegrated process between budgeting and projecting leaves organizations in a position of financial and reputational risk.

Now, high-performing teams are looking at budgeting and forecasting as an integrated, year-round effort. And they are using tools and processes to connect the flow of information in a manner that benefits the entire organization, as well as increasing the reputation and brand of the district as transparent and accountable. An “analytics” or “data-informed” brand can prove to have immeasurable advantages for an organization that is seeking to serve students, staff, and the community with excellence.

When you look at a five-year forecast as more than a spreadsheet and move to the next level of viewing it as a process and an instrument for continual improvement, your district and your community will enjoy numerous tangible and intangible benefits.

Using ESSER Funds to Advance Equity

We’ve all seen the simple graphic representation comparing the concepts of equality and equity: three people of different heights stand behind a fence, trying to watch a baseball game. In an equal distribution of resources, the three people all receive a box of the same height; this helps one person see over the fence but fails to support the other two.



With these equitable supports, each person is raised to a height from which he can see over the fence to watch the baseball game.

That is, different people need different supports to access what is available. And for students and families, being able to access what is available from schools — learning and belonging — is of the utmost importance.

Seizing ESSER as an Opportunity for Equity

Nearly every school district in the country represents a diverse community. Families in the district vary in socioeconomic status, by income, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, or more detailed factors, such as the number of children attending the school district or the level of education of the parents. For this reason, an equal distribution of resources — while sometimes easier to administrate from the school’s perspective — can create barriers to offering equitable opportunities for the community at large.

So, when a once-in-a-generation investment in education comes through the system, it behooves school leaders to consider how to achieve an equitable distribution of that investment. Equitable distribution gets closer to ensuring each student has the individual services they need in order to access learning, provides differentiated PD for teachers which contributes to retention, and brings veteran teachers into classrooms with traditionally underserved students to capitalize on their expertise.

Put simply, that means that equitable distribution can lead to:

  • Stronger learning outcomes for students
  • Greater retention of new and veteran teachers
  • Greater return on veteran teachers’ investment in their craft

 

When a once-in-a-generation investment in education comes through the system, it behooves school leaders to consider how to achieve an equitable distribution of that investment.

 

Tools for Investing Resources Equitably

An equal distribution of resources is simpler than an equitable one. That’s because district administrators can manage equal investment across the board without detailed data; if everyone is getting the same thing, leaders can “slice up the pie” without questioning whether the allocations are going to the places where they’ll be most effective.

But to achieve equitable distribution, leaders need access to information that shows them what’s really going on with student experience and the factors that affect it.

And they can go about accessing that information in two ways:

  1. Pose discovery questions.
  2. Use data analytics tools.

 

Pose Discovery Questions

As with any research project, it’s better to begin with questions rather than assumptions. When you have to rely solely on observations, past experiences, and ad hoc data collection, an educated guess of how resources would be best allocated might be the only option. But when you have ways of accessing comprehensive data, you can pose questions that will frame your assessment of that data, then trust that your tools will surface insights.

A new white paper out of Frontline Education’s Research & Learning Institute on ESSER and Equity offers a list of essential questions that can guide school leaders to ensuring equity. The questions position student performance, student needs, teacher experience, and professional learning as four areas where equitable investment can make a great impact.

A simplified version of those questions looks like this:

  • What resources can students access in their home neighborhoods (food, healthcare, community centers, libraries)?
  • How novice or veteran is the average teacher in the district?
  • Are novice teachers largely serving students who are economically marginalized? And are veteran teachers largely serving students who are not economically marginalized?
  • What professional learning do both novice and veteran teachers have the opportunity to engage in that is differentiated to their needs and designed to address the needs of students who receive services?

These questions — and any other points of focus that may be unique to your district — can help you frame data assessment and seek specific insights that can guide equitable investment.


Use Data Analytics Tools

Data analytics tools can greatly accelerate your quest for equitable investment, largely because they allow you to move beyond the data collection phase, which requires massive effort when starting from scratch and can stop a project before it ever begins. Data analytics tools use the data that you already have stored across disparate platforms — attendance tracking, course grades, discipline records, location information, demographics, and provided services — to see visual, easy-to-read reports that help you identify need across your school community.

When collection is taken care of, leaders can focus on data assessment and deployment. That is, they can focus on how real-time insights can inform decision-making, and which investments are best suited to alleviate gaps in support for students and their families.

Tools that support comparative analytics, financial planning, and budget management are useful in projecting the impact of various investment scenarios or understanding financing in peer districts — but in order to gain visibility into your school community and their needs for equitable investment, student- and family-centric data analytics tools are foundational.

That’s where student analytics and location analytics come in.


Student Analytics

Frontline’s Student Analytics consolidates data from across platforms that measure student performance and determine opportunity gaps to assess equity and improve student outcomes.

These datasets center around:

  • Attendance tracking
  • Course grades
  • Discipline records

This triangulation of student experience can reveal opportunity gaps, a concept which focuses on a strategic approach that targets need to ensure equity, and can shift focus from where the student is or is not succeeding to where the system is or is not creating equitable access to opportunities. When the perspective broadens from the student to the system, teacher experience and the factors that affect it come into view.

Investing in certain types of professional learning for teachers can not only support educators and increase retention but can also advance equity. An essential question asked earlier concerns whether novice and veteran teachers have the opportunity for professional learning that is unique to their needs, and whether those opportunities are meant to address the needs of students who receive services.

When assessing data within the Student Analytics tool, attendance, grades, and discipline data can be compared against which teachers in the district are supporting that student — and if those teachers are set up for success via professional learning.

In this data assessment, actionable queries follow, such as:

  • Are teachers with less than five years’ experience often serving students who receive services?
  • If so, can more experienced teachers support students who are at risk of disengaging with the school community?
  • In both instances, what learning opportunities support teachers in their positions?

In this way, Student Analytics may reveal effective investment initiatives that extend beyond individual students to the types of support they receive. And this analysis of the full spectrum of the student experience can move resource distribution towards systemic equity.

 

Location Analytics

To dig deeper into the root causes of student disengagement, school leaders can look beyond the physical school setting to see what is accessible in students’ own neighborhoods. It can prevent well-intended wrap-around services from falling flat because they’re just not what families really need or can easily access.

Specifically, Frontline’s Location Analytics can reveal what barriers may exist between students and their access to:

  • Transportation
  • Food
  • Health care
  • Internet connection

Empowered with this information, district leaders can more easily understand which groups of students live clustered in which areas, where services might be most effectively located to serve students and their families, what community centers might be powerful partners, and where hotspots should be deployed to close the ‘digital divide.’

This bird’s-eye view can help broaden your perspective from student-specific to system-wide to more fully understand where the system has opportunity gaps and how relief funding can be smartly allocated to minimize those gaps.

 

The Time for Equitable Investment is Now

Together, Frontline’s Student Analytics Lab and Location Analytics can be a powerful tool in seeking greater equity in your school district as an outcome of ESSER funding. With so much pressure placed on schools throughout COVID to find new, innovative ways to reach students and support families through the impossible, it would make sense if now feels like the moment to regroup. As federal relief funds may or may not continue, and the resources that are in play will be set in next year’s budgets, the time for equitable investment is now. Filling short-term opportunity gaps with sustainable, repeatable supports that yield return on student achievement and community well-being can improve equity for students, teachers, and the community at large.
 

Interested in More?

Read the full white paper,“ESSER and Equity: Leveraging Stimulus Funding to Increase Equitable Opportunities,” to see how Student and Location Analytics can support equitable spending of ESSER dollars for solutions that work for today and in your 3- to 5-year financial plans and goals.

 

5 Steps to Forecasting in Uncertain Times

Long-term planning has always been a key responsibility for school business officials. But in the wake of the pandemic, this planning has taken on not only a new level of importance, but also a new degree of complexity.

It isn’t enough to assume that a plan or budget will continue to work just because it has in the past. If COVID-19 has proven anything to education leaders, it’s to expect the unexpected.

1. Update Your Baseline Forecast

As uncertain as things have felt for the past few years, there will always be standard expenses to expect each year. Filling position vacancies, replacements to old equipment, and vehicle maintenance are just a few of the baseline costs of running a school district.

Illustrate the overall direction you expect these expenses to trend. This will be the foundation for your multi-year plan.

2. Create a Multi-Year Plan

To be clear, forecasting isn’t about seeing into the future with perfect clarity. And no one is expecting you to predict the next cataclysmic event. But by using the historical data at your disposal, you can foresee major expenses and budget changes before they need to happen, and plan for them years in advance.

To do this, though, start by looking backwards. Whether you’re new in your role as a school business official or have years of experience under your belt, it’s important to know how your district has performed in the past — and it’s crucial that you convey these performances in your plan.

 

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For this reason, maintain at least 5 years of historical actuals for inclusion in your multi-year projection plan. This will help you establish context for the progress you intend for the district to make, as well.

Aim to forecast for the next five years. Expect your budgetary projections to be more accurate in years 0, 1, and 2 than in 3, 4, or 5. Still, taken as a whole, these predictions should signal the direction you expect the district to trend.

The overall financial trajectory of this plan is your first opportunity to identify potential warning signs. The earlier you can see these red flags, the wider your window will be to execute a course correction plan.

3. Review Staffing

You know that navigating staff vacancies is a fact of life for school districts. But rarely will any two years look exactly the same. And with 70 to 80 percent (or more) of your budget tied to staffing, it’s easy to see why key stakeholders need thorough reporting on it year in and year out.

The factors that drive salary and benefit costs will vary from one school year to the next, so transparent communication is key here. You should also include in your report:

  • Total teacher and staff salaries
  • Medical insurance and other benefits
  • Salaries and benefits by major areas
  • Package contributions

Including ‘what-if’ scenarios can be an effective tool for illustrating your district’s financial story. What would be the impact of major changes, such as a 10 percent salary raise? By projecting the results of these potentialities, you can increase true understanding of the district’s long-term strategy.

 

What would be the impact of major changes, such as a 10 percent salary raise?

 

Educator experience should be a major component of your forecast, as well. By laying out the way this variable impacts compensation levels and salaries overall, you can again help foster understanding. Assets that can help with this include:

  • Position control
  • Experience histograms
  • Peer comparison analysis
  • Position-level analysis
  • Salary analysis
  • FTE count per activity
  • Trend analysis

One other important factor to communicate is your staffing level. Your student-to-staff ratio is important, and can affect not only compensation and workload but, crucially, student performance as well. How does that impact your district’s performance in the near and long term? How might new hires change that (or not)?

 

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4. Review Enrollment

Enrollment trends affect your district’s budget, and can present unique challenges. Student sub-group populations will change from one year to the next, which of course impacts funding. Add in funding based on enrollment or attendance, it’s clear to see the importance of projecting who will attend school in the years to come.

Look at your historical enrollment data from a few different standpoints.

  • From a grade-by-grade versus district-wide perspective
  • From a local versus state perspective
  • From a district versus charter school enrollment perspective

5. Establish a Budget Calendar

It isn’t enough to communicate your forecast once every year, and expect everyone to be on the same page. Instead, create a schedule of meetings to update key stakeholders on changes for each component of your budget. Having regular meetings on the calendar can be a steadying force for your community in uncertain times.

 

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Want to Dive Deeper?

Uncertain times will never be stress-free. But by planning for your district’s long-term future now, you can better adapt to the challenges ahead. Tools like Frontline’s analytics solutions can help make the process easier, too.

You can learn more about this topic as well as how Frontline can help in this on demand webinar: A Winning Model for Your Budget Presentation.

How to Remove Fear from Technology Inventory Audits

You might know what it’s like. The letter arrives in the mail: your district is being audited. As you stare down weeks or months of sweat-inducing, tedious work providing all the documentation that’s going to be required, you wonder… What could I have done to prepare for such a time as this?

There’s a lot of opportunity for human error, and depending on how manual your processes are for inventories and audits, you might even have to battle illegible handwriting. Or perhaps your district has a system, but no one understands the full capacity of what the system can do.

So what’s an Inventory Specialist or Comptroller to do? Uwe Lord, Inventory Specialist at Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, and Lance McConkey, Comptroller at DeKalb Public Schools, share how they’ve handled audits at their schools.

While you can’t avoid an audit, you can take a few steps to start removing the fear from audits.

1. Do not piecemeal an audit

When completing an inventory audit, there are so many details to keep track of. You’re responsible for sending inventories out to sites, you’re accountable for getting them back, and trusting that there weren’t any human errors along the way. In addition, each department at your district might be maintaining its own inventory. That means that nutrition and IT could each have their own ways of tracking what they have, often with pen and paper.

Of course, avoiding a piecemeal approach to completing an audit creates requires more work to be completed in less time. With time being your most finite resource, working with a third party can help you ensure that the inventory and the audit will be completed correctly and efficiently.

When you piecemeal an audit, you add another layer of complexity to your process, making an already difficult process even harder. Maintaining a consistent inventory can help, which leads us to our next step.

2. Track every stage of the lifecycle of every device (and funding sources for those devices) along with activity

Audits can be scary for a lot of reasons, one of which might simply be the unknown. “What will auditors find? Did we tag our funding sources correctly for everything?”

Tracking your devices is crucial in building trust with stakeholders, since it gives you a solid understanding of exactly what your district has — and doesn’t have. Doing so means that when you make requests for new Chromebooks, for example, you can be confident that the new devices are truly needed. Plus, when you’re tracking each device’s lifecycle, you can see what you have in real-time so that by the time your district experiences an audit, there are fewer unknowns in the process.

3. Don’t forget the little things

Sometimes, it’s all in the details, and finding the right balance of granularity can be key.

Consider naming conventions: while deciding what naming system you’ll use can be tedious, the importance of a solid naming convention suddenly becomes clear when you’re in the middle of an audit. If you decide to work with a third party, they should be able to provide you with guidance naming conventions and other details that can help you year-round — not only when you’re being audited.

4. Know when to ask for help

Uwe Lord recommends talking to other districts about how they approach audits. He also suggests working with a third party, provided they have experience with K-12 audits. For Uwe and his team, working with Frontline was especially helpful for their initial inventory. They uncovered devices filed under the wrong funding source and were able to classify devices that previously had never been tagged.

Because of the fear of being blamed for missing or damaged assets, audits can result in a fair amount of stress for teachers and other staff. Engaging a third party is also a great way to ease the burden of an inventory audit for those individuals. And less stress for teachers is a win for everyone!

Both Uwe and Lance’s districts chose Frontline to help them with their inventory and audit processes. Learn more about Frontline Inventory Management here.

If you want to work with a third party, but aren’t sure how to get buy-in, DeKalb Public Schools’ Comptroller Lance McConkey shares a couple tips:

  • Compare the true cost of doing it on your own. How much time is your team spending on an audit? How much time does reconciliation take? Are there other projects and initiatives that get put on hold while focusing on the audit? It may help to paint a picture for stakeholders of an audit’s ripple effects. Your initial inventory alone, if moving from manual to digital processes, can give you baseline data that will pay off year after year.
  • Think about what your school board values most. Lance’s board bought into third party assistance because the district had a recurring finding over Capital Assets since before 2013 and hadn’t been able to get it cleared with internal resources alone. By the time the audit was done and the findings were cleared, Lance had built a foundation of trust with the board in the process.

Wondering what an asset management system can track? Check out this blog post to learn more

5. Revisit your processes regularly

Data consistency is so important for everything you do at your district, and that is absolutely the case when it comes to inventories and audits. The processes you use can either support or detract from your data consistency, so it’s helpful to revisit your processes regularly to ensure the tasks you complete regularly help — not hurt — when an audit rolls around.

The main takeaway? More clarity = less fear.

While audits may never become your favorite part of work, they don’t have to be a source of fear, either.

If you want to dive deeper and hear directly from Lance and Uwe, tune in to their on demand webinar all about using asset management systems to prepare for audits here.

Streamlining End of Year Device Collection

These days, technology is as essential to learning as pencils and paper. Technology use is interwoven with how educators teach and how students digest new content and practice new skills. Yet, the growth of technology use in schools has meant that technology teams across the nation have hustled to maintain order as more devices than ever enter their district’s ecosystem.

For your technology team, now is the time to prepare for an orderly, efficient, and successful device collection process at the end of this school year.

How Technology Use in Schools Has Grown

Not so long ago, the computer labs of the 1990s and early 2000s were replaced with mobile carts full of laptops that moved between classrooms. Just five years ago when I was teaching, my grade team and I would begin each morning with a “tech check-in.”

I might text the group something like, “We’re drafting papers today — I need the laptop cart!” A colleague might reply something like, “I need it first period, I’ll bring it to you after that!” A 1:1 technology program felt like the distant future.

Our urban campus housed three schools on three stories — that is, we were cramped. With every classroom in use all the time, prep space for teachers was limited. Some would sit in the hallway and some in the noisy common area. My search for a quiet spot to work yielded unexpected results. The calmest room in the school? The tech storage room, situated behind the technology team’s office.

That team, a small group of whip-smart problem-solvers who kept teachers and students in technology on a shoestring, let me sit in that storage room, silently planning and grading in 40-minute segments throughout the day. To make space for a chair, I pushed aside tangled cords, toppled devices in need of repair, and carts with broken wheels or busted charging ports. Common to so many schools, tech use had grown faster than efficient processes around maintaining, refreshing, repairing, and storing devices.

With the rapid expansion of 1:1 programs in recent years, school technology departments have their hands fuller than ever. While there is still plenty of trial, error, and research to be done to inform how technology use will most effectively improve learning outcomes, teachers will continue to use devices and programs to personalize learning, aid guided practice, and foster creativity and collaboration among students.

But pervasive technology use in schools creates questions as well, such as:

  • Is every device working?
  • Does everyone have access to wi-fi at home?
  • How can districts track devices, to know when one is lost or damaged?
  • And finally – what are the best practices for collecting devices at the end of the year so that tracking, inventory, and device management gets easier with each passing year?

It’s Time to Level Set about Device Collection

Simply put, the clocks will not turn back to the days of computer labs or laptop carts. Most of today’s students are in possession of a school-provided device. Technology teams must track, collect, organize, inventory, repair, refresh, reset, and safely store every device. (That’s a lot of to dos!) And the struggle to prevent device loss continues as well.

For this reason, it’s time to level set about device collection.

  • Inventory: Using an asset management system during collection makes this a cinch.
  • Status: When devices are inventoried as they’re collected, their status — that is, whether they need to be refreshed, reimaged, or recycled — can be notated in the device’s digital recording, keeping you organized throughout the process.
  • Storage – With better tracking and recordkeeping, understanding incoming storage needs will get easier with each passing year.

So, what are best practices in device collection?

Best Practices for End-of-Year Device Collection

1. Use an asset inventory management system

  • Beginning with this step of selecting and setting up your asset inventory management system allows you and your team to take a long-term view of the device collection process. When you’re comfortable with the user experience of the software, it can help guide collection procedures, such as the equipment you’ll take to the collection site and how specific you’ll need to be about collecting devices from different grade-bands at one time.
  • Using the system to prep will also give you insight into how many staff members you’ll want leading and supporting the collection effort.

2. Determine physical collection site(s) and optimal traffic pattern

  • While middle and high school students used devices more than elementary school students in the past, that may no longer be true in your district. When choosing drop-off sites, consider alleviating the logistical burden on families with multiple children by having only one drop-off site.
  • Like any school-wide event, preparing for the flow of traffic is highly important. Without this planning, the best trained staff or most effective software won’t help you much. Consider if your school’s daily morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up route is sufficient for device collection, if more space is needed, or if a different route altogether is needed, to ease traffic back-up onto a main road, for instance.

3. Communicate often, early, and in many ways to families

  • Most districts refined their family outreach practices during the pandemic out of necessity. Consider how your school most successfully reaches parents and follow those avenues to communicate the procedure for device drop-off — often and early.
  • Also communicate what will happen if devices aren’t returned. Are you able to “freeze” devices after the collection date, disincentivizing a student’s wish to hold onto the device over the summer for personal use?

4. Train staff members to support

  • Everyone on the technology team will certainly play a leading role in executing the device collection plan. Early alignment between these people and administrators and other stakeholders will help the process unfold smoothly. Who can you set an alignment meeting with today to get going on the same page?
  • Even with the most organized procedures and flow of traffic, there may be moments where the team gets backed up, so it can also be useful to have “hands on deck” who aren’t necessarily part of the tech team. These might be volunteers or staff members who can lend support for a stipend. Who will you have on deck to support collection in those moments? How can you provide them with simple but supportive training to get them ready to help?

5. Prep hardware and software for go time

  • Before the big day, doing a walk-through to make sure the right equipment is ready for use and can easily be transported to the collection site(s) can make all the difference. Make sure each barcode scanner is working and that there is enough equipment (scanners, iPads or laptops, etc.) for staff to access the asset inventory management system on collection day.
  • Have trained staff and equipment in place for go time! With everything else figured out, traffic will begin to flow and your procedures for device intake, inventory, and organization will unfold smoothly!

Collection Wrap-up

After the device collection process is complete, physical inventory should be checked against digital inventory that was saved in the asset inventory management system throughout collection, then sorted based on repair needs, reimaging needs, or disposal procedure.

In the end, reports will be easy to run and share from the system, turning collection from a chaotic “drop-off” procedure into a strategic process that streamlines inventory and device management. Following these steps, you’ll be able to close out collection efficiently and look ahead to next year’s distribution. See How Frontline Asset Management Can Help.

Meg Kende

Meg Kende is a writer specializing in education and educational technology. She is a former New York City teacher with a master’s degree in teaching English and now writes for organizations who are cheerleaders and change-makers for schools.