Frontline Blog

Bargaining in reaction to outdated and sometimes misleading information is extremely uncomfortable.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

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.

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.

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. Read the Blog

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

Presenting your district’s annual budget is hard, especially when the audience you present to has a different perspective from your own.

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.

The Frontline Research and Learning Institute recently surveyed district and school administrators regarding their organization’s past, present, and future focus of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I).