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Using Analytics in Negotiations

When I began as a brand-new school business manager for a small rural district, I had a vague idea of being expected to crunch numbers during negotiations. Instead, fresh on the heels of a legislative overhaul of K–12 funding in Washington State, I found myself as one of the lead bargainers, attempting to refute the financial analysis presented by the state teachers’ union.

Bargaining in reaction to outdated and sometimes misleading information is extremely uncomfortable. The experience left its mark and underscored the importance of communicating our district’s “story” to all stakeholders well before any negotiation sessions. That means presenting beyond “where are we now” to “where we expect to be” in a year, two years, and five years down the road based on current trends. It means not only using analytics but also finding a way to make their interpretation easily accessible to everyone.

Ask any school business manager in the country where their budget story begins, and the almost-unanimous answer is “enrollment.” With few exceptions, enrollment is the driver for public school funding.

During bargaining, you must have a firm grasp of the revenue you are expecting before committing to any of the asks on the table. Is your enrollment climbing or declining, or has it plateaued? Are you expecting to rebound quickly from the COVID-19 pandemic enrollment drops, or do your data show a slower recovery? What do the answers mean for your state funding and local levy collections?

Although much has been made of the enrollment declines during the pandemic and the need for states to continue to provide budgeted funding amounts, school officials are also coming to grips with the prospect of losing millions in local levy collections. How then does this translate into revenue projections?

Make sure your stakeholders (school board, superintendent, and community — which includes your bargaining unit members) have ample opportunity to review the effect of enrollment on the sustainability of bargained agreements. As a side note, every ask during bargaining has an attached cost, even if it doesn’t appear so on the surface. Those costs add up in a hurry!

Coupled with your revenue projections are your fund balance trends. At the end of 2020–2021, many districts were sitting on seemingly healthy balances because of the savings in supplies and operational costs afforded by remote learning. Those balances may be deceptive! Analytics are critical in looking ahead to see where you expect to be throughout the bargained agreement.

The Ins and Outs of Bargaining

Although Dieringer School District showed a fund balance of just under 20% at the end of the past fiscal year, that’s not a complete picture. Every projection scenario we created reflects a dip into the negative by the end of the 2023–2024 fiscal year, unless staffing is adjusted. That is even without any additional bargained compensation.

Based on this knowledge, the question then becomes how the requested compensation increases will further affect the district’s ability to maintain staffing levels. It’s important to be prepared to show that information early and often (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Amount and Percent of General Fund Expenditures

Once at the bargaining table, the next hurdle to clear is the selection of comparable districts. More often than not, bargaining groups will look to their neighbors as comps; however, that may not necessarily be advantageous if, like us, your neighbors are 10 times your size and sitting on a significantly larger tax base.

Taking the time to find peer districts with enrollment stories similar to yours concerning income, English language learners, and total enrollment will help you frame your response to questions of spending and staffing trends (see Figure 2). You may find you need a different peer group for compensation questions than for administrative spending. Although you may show a highly inflated percentage of spending for total administration compared with larger districts, the analytics may show that you are right in line with like sized districts.

Figure 2. Demographics of Peer Districts

Peer groups may also present the opportunity to explain your outlier spending trends. Our district far outspends our peers in special education programs because our board has made special education a budget priority, and we employ far more paraeducators than districts of similar size. Because our teachers have come to rely on that instructional support, the board is more willing to negotiate with an eye toward leaving enough budget capacity to maintain that staffing.

Before bringing it to the table, know what your data say about your spending patterns compared with your peers (see Figures 3 and 4).

Figure 3. Administration as a Percentage of Total General Fund Expense

Figure 4. Special Education as a Percent of Total General Fund Expense

The onset of the pandemic and the associated staff concerns over health and safety measures have brought working conditions to the forefront of bargaining. Although class size has always been a hot button, it’s never before been accompanied by outright fear that students are sitting too close to one another or to their teacher. Trend data can be used to counter both the argument that your district has the biggest class sizes and that there are too many students in a classroom.

Looking at our teaching staffing ratio, we find that we are absolutely in line with our peers. When total staffing is brought into the picture, an even starker contrast is painted between what the state funds and how the district has prioritized small class sizes during the pandemic. Districts that are being asked to use available dollars from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to reduce class sizes or to compensate teachers for larger classes will find this analysis particularly helpful (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Teacher Staffing Ratio Comparison

Inevitably, the negotiations will turn to the topics of compensation and retention, the meat and potatoes of any negotiation. Some critical pieces of data will be your average staff experience (as this usually translates into higher placement on a salary schedule), your average salary, per pupil spending on instructional staff, and turnover rates.

I’ve heard everything from “We don’t want to keep losing staff to . . .” to “You’re getting plenty of money from the state to make this happen.” By analyzing our teacher turnover, we were able to rebut with clear evidence not only that we were not losing staff members to any particular district, but that we were actually hiring and retaining the most experienced staff members in our region.

By the same token, analytics showed that the district was contributing the second highest amount toward compensation above state funding among those same peer districts. It shifted the conversation from whether our starting salaries were competitive to how to sustain salaries for a highly experienced staff.

Analytics also debunked the myth that our district lagged behind our peers in average salary and in awarding salary increases. In fact, they showed just the opposite: our certificated staff members enjoyed the highest average salary of our peers and had bargained an unprecedented 27% salary increase in three years.

One last point about salaries: typically, salaries and benefits run 75%–85% of a district’s budget. Because the data show we are already spending just under 84% of our budget on compensation, it’s imperative that I share the narrative with my board that little room is left in our salary cap, so to speak, for further increases unless we see a drastic change in our revenues. Buildings still need to be heated, and the lights still need to shine (see Figure 6 and Table 1).

Figure 6. Comparison of Percent of Operating Expense


Table 1. Funded Salary vs Average Paid Salary Comparison

The Key to Success

In the end, you’ll know you’ve used your data to the best of your ability to tell your story if both sides come away from the table agreeing that you’ve done good work. It’s possible. I’ve had the pleasure, once I got the hang of proper preparation and communication. Analytics were the key.

This article originally appeared in the March 2022 School Business Affairs magazine and is reprinted with permission of the Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO). 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 Case for Analyzing Your District’s Staffing Levels

Regular performance reviews are an important part of any successful school district’s best practices. Many variables impact performance, and the most successful districts are those that can identify performance gaps early to identify adjustments to most effectively close the identified gaps. A “gap” is a difference between your district’s actual performance and the performance goal — or it may be a gap between your district’s performance and the performance of peer districts. (Often these gaps will exist simultaneously). Among the variables that your school district can adjust to directly impact results are your staffing levels at key positions.

Two common gaps that should prompt a district to review and analyze their staffing levels are:

  1. Student Performance Gaps
  2. Financial Performance Gaps

Let’s look at some of the ways your district can use existing data to analyze staffing levels to address each scenario.

Analyzing Staffing Relative to a Student Performance Gap

A performance gap can exist relative to the district’s goals, its peers, or both. In this scenario, districts should use the existing data available either sourced directly from the state or through an analytic software — such as Frontline’s Comparative Analytics solution — to answer the following questions:

  1. How are my staffing levels trending at key positions?
  2. How are high-achieving peer districts staffing key positions?
  3. Are staff deployed to each attendance center to achieve the best results?

Fluctuations in enrollment can drive staffing level changes and potentially impact the level of service and support your district can provide to its students. To incorporate this variable, analyze staffing levels using the ratio metric “Student to Staff FTE” — or the total enrollment divided by the total FTE for one or more specific positions. The Staffing Ratio analytic in Comparative Analytics can produce district and attendance center trends as well as peer comparisons for this ratio.

The peer set you use is very important in determining your “high-achieving” peers. Identify districts with a similar student population and demographics (focusing on demographics known to be more correlated to performance) and districts with similar financial resources at their disposal. Once you have your “Like” peers, compare recent student performance metrics and look for districts that are regularly outperforming the group.

Now you can ask: “How are my high-achieving peers staffing key positions relative to my staffing levels?” Review the staffing ratio comparisons and trends to decide if your staffing levels may be driving some of the performance gap. For districts with multiple attendance centers, that additional performance and ratio analysis should be done at the school level for additional insights.

Analyzing Staffing Relative to a Financial Performance Gap

The second scenario that should prompt a staffing level review is when operational spending is materially over or under the district’s budgeted amount. With personnel expenses often exceeding 80% of a school district’s operating budget, staffing levels should be one of the first areas a district reviews if expenses are coming in noticeably different than expected.

Under-spending may find its source in a lack of hiring and/or an increase in vacancies. Use internal data to review historical position vacancies and detailed staff experience levels to ensure you’re projecting turnover accurately.

Overspending relative to budget may mean an increase in staffing levels, less vacancies, and/or higher than expected salaries. The Compensation Calculator, available in Frontline’s Financial Planning Analytics, can help your district create scenarios for future budget amounts related to compensation.

Metrics that should be considered include Actual and Budgeted Expenditures, Actual and Budgeted Expenditures per Student, Actual to Budget Variance, Actual and Budgeted FTE counts, and Salary data for relative Degrees and Experience Levels.

Comparative Analytics offers several analytic templates that can help answer questions such as:

  1. What has the historical Actual to Budget variance been for Salary and Benefit spending?
  2. How is my Salary and Benefit expense (actual and per student) trending?
  3. How does my Salary and Benefit expense compare to peers?
  4. How competitive are my salaries in key positions?

Beyond the numbers, any proposed changes to staff should include important considerations including the impact on the organization’s culture and individual staff relationships. Weigh any perceived negative impact to individuals and/or your culture against what the data suggests. Including the analytical approaches defined above alongside an understanding of your current culture will drive the insight critical to understanding what actions your district can take to address performance gaps and the impact changes to staffing might have.

Create school board financial reports in minutes? Yes, you can.

Financial systems for school districts are great tools to accurately record revenue and expense transactions. But, as anyone who is charged with creating monthly reports can tell you, that’s where their ease of use ends. It typically takes hours — even days — of work to manually extract the right data and then build reports the district relies on to manage the health of the budget.

As a former chief financial officer of a large district in suburban Chicago, I know how much time my finance team devoted to the process every month. In addition to driving strategic financial decisions, the reports were a critical part of how we kept the district’s administrators and school board up to date. We had no choice but to dig in to get the information we needed.

I knew someday there would be a better way.

That’s why I’m so excited about Frontline’s Budget Management Analytics, powered by Forecast5. Instead of hours or days, with just a few clicks of the mouse the module creates monthly (or quarterly, year-to-date, custom, whatever you need) reports in minutes. The time formerly needed just to compile and generate the reports can now be used to analyze the results, identify trends and confidently predict where you’ll be at the end of the fiscal year.

Reports in minutes

Around the middle of the month, when the bank reconciliation for the previous month is available, a school district simply uploads data from their financial system to Budget Management Analytics, which then automatically updates the financial database on a year-to-date and projected basis. Then, it’s Go Time.

Standard reports

Based on pre-set templates, Budget Management Analytics analyzes the appropriate data and generates a standard set of reports and a dashboard view of revenues and expenditures. This is the information that helps CFOs gauge where they are at for the year and make strategic decisions to cut expenses if needed or invest in key initiatives like technology if excess funds are available.

In addition to the aggregate report, fund specific reports are generated automatically.

Now there’s time to dig deeper if needed to better understand the causes of variances by looking at the data from a different view.

For example, if there’s interest in the current revenue variances for the educational fund, the Revenue Input Results report is readily available.

It’s also easy to pull up the Expenditure Input Results report for the educational fund (or any other fund) to quickly understand where expenses are incurred.

Custom reports

Creating custom reports to answer specific questions from administrators or for personal analysis purposes also only takes a few minutes. View all funds or a specific fund, specify the level of detail needed by indicating a source level, and identify the monetary threshold for review. Results pop up in seconds.

Respond quickly to colleagues or uncover answers to internal queries without ending up in the weeds filtering out data that’s immaterial. Easily change what data is reviewed by picking different parameters for the analysis.

Put time on your side

Instead of devoting lots of time to the generation of reports, now there’s a simple and fast way to access all the data from multiple angles with the ability to produce more accurate analyses. Budget Management Analytics enables school districts to focus on managing the future with projections based on trends and up-to-date information that minimizes the margin of error…with some time to spare.

K-12: Forecast the Future to Fight Budget-Busting Surprises

How many line items are in your K-12 annual budget? 750? 1000? More? That’s a lot of places for the unexpected to creep in and mess with your carefully crafted financial plan. Save the surprises for birthday parties by getting a better handle on what’s headed your way with a process called operational forecasting.

School district budgets are complicated. While it’s impossible to anticipate every shift in expected revenues and expenses, there are ways to get better visibility into monthly performance at the aggregate level and identify trends based on historical data. By combining and analyzing past and present financial reports, you can forecast what’s needed to support the remainder of the fiscal year and make adjustments.

Sounds complicated and time-consuming, right? Fortunately, Frontline’s Budget Management Analytics simplifies the process.

See into the future

Like most school districts, you likely have a financial system that’s great for logging and assigning transactions to specific line items in your funds. But that’s where usability hits a wall. To extract meaning from all the stored data, you need to search for what you need, then painstakingly cut-and-paste the information into a spreadsheet making sure all your formulas are working properly. Only then can you play with the data to come up with a useful analysis.
Or, you could simply upload monthly transactions from your financial system into Budget Management Analytics. Then, you can easily run standard or one-off reports to assess where you’re at compared to plan, look at trend reports from previous years, identify variances and model ‘what if?’ scenarios. The module does the heavy lifting leaving you time to apply what you learned to manage the budget. It’s all done in a matter of minutes versus the hours it takes to create manual reports.

Monthly re-forecasting

Ready to stop surprises in their tracks? It’s important to undertake a key element of operational forecasting: variance analysis.

With Budget Management Analytics, you’re able to identify significant variances to the annual budget plan using present thresholds quantified as dollars or percentages. You can also uncover what caused the variances as well as assess the impact.

Armed with this information, you’re able re-forecast the remaining monthly allocations, reallocate funds to address the unexpected and fund priority initiatives if needed.

The data you need to start operational forecasting is buried in all those line items. You just need a better way to put the data to work to remove the element of surprise from your budget management process.

Free eBook:

Stay Ahead of the Game: Tips for Managing This Year’s Budget While Planning for Next Year How can you avoid being data-rich but information-poor? Download Now

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:

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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.

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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.

 

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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