Frontline Blog

In today’s K-12 landscape, school leaders face a host of challenges that seem to have only been exacerbated since the pandemic.

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.

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.

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?

Bargaining in reaction to outdated and sometimes misleading information is extremely uncomfortable.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 stakehold¬ers 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.

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.

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.

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

As the finance administrator of your district, you have a number of roles. But did you know? One of the most important parts you play is that of storyteller. How you tell the story of your district’s budget can be a difference-maker in building trust with your board members. How can you use data to give a winning financial presentation? Find out below.