Fueling the Need for Oversight
With gasoline and diesel fuel more than $4 per gallon, districts struggle under an increasing financial burden. And with increased financial pressures comes a higher risk for theft and abuse. Struggling providers or departments may cut corners or break laws to stay within budget, boost profits, or stave off bankruptcy.
September 2008
Thwarting the Time Bandits
A variety of time and leave schemes are used to cheat districts, where salaries and benefits are the greatest expense. Some involve the manipulation of controls put in place to monitor actual hours worked. Others involve the payroll process, insurance fraud, ghost employees, and other unscrupulous behaviors. Board member oversight helps keep time bandits away.
August 2008
Keeping Tabs on Your School Booster Clubs
Booster clubs can support a wide range of needs or target specific activities such as performing arts, academics, or athletics. Whatever the focus, it's clear that many districts could not offer a complete educational experience without the extra efforts of these clubs and their volunteers. They are making a vital contribution in thousands of communities across the country.
July 2008
EnergySmart Schools Save Money
The initial cost for EnergySmart Schools used to be significantly higher than for their traditional counterparts, but thanks to technology advances and integrated design practices, school districts enjoy paybacks in five to eight years as well as ongoing returns on their energy efficiency investments. The business case for an EnergySmart approach has become stronger than ever.
July 2008
How Schools Can Use Social Networking
The rise of dozens of new voluntary communities, or social networks, is bringing us together in unique, technology-driven ways. Could Facebook be a model for a 21st century purposeful student community designed for school improvement? Possibly. But evidence suggests that education is not prepared to accept the dimension of purposeful communities offered by social networks.
July 2008
The Smart Approach to Technology Purchases
How can a school board have confidence that it's making a good decision when asked to approve the purchase of new technology? It begins by putting less focus on the upfront price tag. The smart buy isn't always the cheapest, and it isn't a vendor discount or low bid that guarantees a district the best "bang for its buck."
July 2008
Doing the Public's Bidding
School districts in the United States spend almost $500 billion each year. Most states have bidding laws designed to provide protection for districts so that quality materials can be purchased at competitive prices. Unfortunately, sometimes these systems can be manipulated or bypassed. Board members must be aware of how the bidding process can be undermined.
June 2008
How Can Schools Cope with Base Re-Alignments?
Districts are feeling the effects of a massive redeployment of U.S. military troops. A score of military installations are closing and others are shrinking as personnel transfer to other facilities. Like it or not, when the Pentagon says a military installation is growing or shrinking, school officials can do little but salute--and make plans to get ready.
May 2008
Getting Your Schools Through Tough Budget Times
So what do you do in uncertain financial times? What's your game plan? How do you avoid missteps? While there is no blueprint for weathering a poor economy and budget shortfalls, there are common practices used by those most in the know: the financially strapped. Read these tips from districts weathering the current financial storm.
May 2008
Use School Business Managers as Budget Allies
The bottom line—the balance that remains after all revenue is accounted for and all expenses are paid—shows a school district's fiscal status. But business managers should consider an equally important bottom line: a balance sheet that shows how budget decisions improved achievement for all students.
May 2008
How the Mortgage Crisis Is Affecting School Budgets
August 2007 marked the beginning of the seemingly never-ending saga of the sub-prime mortgage debacle. What went wrong with the housing market? And what does all of this have to do with school boards? Plenty.
April 2008
How to Find The Right Auditor
In recent years, accounting fraud in America has been under intense scrutiny. Unfortunately, school districts are not immune to this ailment. School districts, like all governmental entities, must have financial statements evaluated by external auditors. Accurate statements are critical as they provide a record of past and current business activities and agencies use them to determine a district's financial health.
March 2008
Making Sure Construction Projects Go as Planned
Providing oversight for a school's construction or expansion is a daunting challenge for most board members. In an effort to improve the bottom line, contractors may take shortcuts, not hire qualified workers, or allow fraudulent practices. This results in significant hazards for children. And it presents a particular risk for school districts. Can these dangerous and expensive problems be avoided?
February 2008
Are Your Schools Properly Insured?
The start of a new calendar year is the perfect time to assess your district’s risks. When districts fail to identify risks and provide protection for children and taxpayers, everyone loses. So, how can you protect your district? One way to mitigate risk is to purchase insurance. Insurance can address many risks. School boards must become familiar with these insurance opportunities and the protections they provide.
January 2008
Home-Grown Education Foundations Can Help With School Finances
Boards must work closely with foundation organizers to fill in district funding gaps
December 2007
Sharing a Business System Saves Time and Money for Schools
Five Wisconsin school districts develop a planning system to streamlines business practices.
December 2007
Checking for a Checkered Past
To screen out high-risk candidates, your personnel department should implement procedures that go beyond looking at criminal records.
November 2007
Outsourcing Survival Tips
Going outside can control costs and improve services, but advance planning and common sense are critical to success
October 2007
Winning School Finance Elections
The old tried-and-true strategies aren't working like they once did, but you can sway skittish voters with sound strategy and creative engagement
October 2007
The Good 'Green'
With strong conservation and sustainability policies you can save the planet and save money at the same time
October 2007
Where the Money Is
Without strong internal controls in place, your school district is vulnerable to fraud. How can you ensure that your district does not become a white-collar crime scene?
September 2007
Basic Training
When new board members take office, consider giving them a 'Finance 101' review of key areas that will require both patience and attention.
August 2007
The New Fundraising
For years, parent-teacher organizations and booster clubs have raised money for the “extras”—special equipment and learning opportunities such as field trips and band uniforms. But as districts are forced to pinch pennies, fundraising has taken on new meaning. Today, a large number of school districts have formed foundations to raise money—sometimes so successfully that the proceeds are used to pay teacher salaries.
July 2007
A Foundation of Funding
From mini-grants to multi-million-dollar gifts, private investment in public schools is increasing. Public school foundations are leading the charge, earning anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $15 million or more each year. These foundations are also getting more strategic. More are targeting individual donors, and getting better results.
July 2007
Protecting Your Assets
The reorganization meeting agenda is a balance of recurring tasks and new challenges. For many boards, this process becomes routine and rarely changes in format. Boards must resist the tendency to blindly follow the 'annual reorganization agenda'. The reorganization meeting is when important financial decisions are made, such as which banks or investment vehicles the district will use to generate interest income.
July 2007
Oversight, Not Out of Mind
Oversight, the monitoring and evaluation of the administration, is an activity essential to the security of every district. Board members are charged with developing policies that provide direction for the administrators, teachers, and support staff. For board members, passing the budget is not enough. You must keep tabs on spending, too, without managing to micromanage.
June 2007
Rolling the Dice
On March 30, 2006, North Carolina rolled the dice and officially got into the gambling business with a long-awaited and highly controversial state lottery to fund schools. Results have been less than spectacular; revenues for the first year were $75 million less than originally expected. Lotteries may seem like the shortest route to instant cash for schools, but they're proving to be a high-risk gamble.
May 2007
A Balancing Act
Corporate advertising is part of daily school life in more than 80 percent of the nation’s public elementary, middle, and high schools, according to a recent study. Advertising is not going away anytime soon. The question for school leaders is: How can schools find the right balance between corporate support and commercial infringement?
May 2007
The End at the Beginning
Beyond the emotional and educational challenges triggered by administrative changes, boards must be alert to the potential financial dilemmas related to exit payments—the final salary and benefit payments due to administrators. These remunerations may cause painful consequences for the district. One infamous example of regrettable consequences occurred in 1992, when a superintendent in New York State retired with a pension, unused sick days, and vacation benefits totaling more than $1 million. When the local newspapers published this information, the story became a public relations nightmare.
May 2007
Managing Your Money
Just about anything can throw a district's budget off. Too many kids. Too few kids. Natural disaster. Human error. Old buildings. New mandates. About the only constant in the business of educating the next generation is that the stakes will get higher. To squeeze more out of less, districts are relying on creativity and outside-the-box thinking to keep budgets balanced.
May 2007
Fixed Assets: Are Yours Broken?
Could we be missing something? As school board members pursuing our primary educational mission, it is easy to lose sight of the tangible property, or fixed assets, that we safeguard on behalf of our constituents. In the wake of corporate scandals and federal legislation, regulatory agencies now hold districts to a higher standard. Do you have control over your tangible property?
April 2007
Using Savvy Could Mean Savings
How can you keep technology current when you operate on a shoestring budget? Before embarking on ambitious tech projects, it’s important to take an inventory of your assets, review spending, and evaluate your personnel and processes. The exercise helps determine the district’s needs, what’s working and what’s not, and potential areas for cost cutting—all of which aids in formulating a comprehensive road map and strategy. All of your decisions flow from this initial assessment.
April 2007
A Money Management Primer
Today’s school administrators must use their resources effectively. Time, qualified personnel, and materials are all in short supply. But perhaps the most critical—and scarce—resource is money. How can you best stretch your dollars and make them last as long as possible? All investment has some risk, but these tips can help your district make the most of scant resources.
September 2006
Gathering Storm
State funding is flat, federal money is falling, and local governments are flailing as they struggle to deal with skyrocketing costs for pensions and health care. Add to that a slower-than-expected recovery from the post-9/11 downturn, escalating fuel costs, and an aging workforce that is living longer in retirement, and you have a growing percentage of fixed costs that are being used to pay for resources outside the classroom. Soaring costs for health care and pension benefits threaten your district’s bottom line.
May 2006
Lessons from a Scandal
Public schools constitute one of America’s largest industries, with nearly 15,000 districts handling more than 47 million students and annual budgets that total in the hundreds of billions of dollars. School board members must display the highest level of honor and integrity when using this money to educate students served within their communities. As the district's watchdogs, they have one of the most important jobs in the community.
May 2006
Sharp-Eyed Oversight
How can school leaders prevent fraud or carelessness in the finance office? The attitude at the top is critical. The school board must have policies and procedures in place that send a clear message to all employees that honesty and integrity are essential. Just as important, guidelines need to be in place for addressing noncompliance.
May 2006
Money Matters
A budget should be simple: You take your available revenue and make your expenditures match. But as anyone who has ever operated on a budget knows, it's often anything but simple. And that is especially true in public education. Here is how to get a head start on next year’s budget.
November 2005
Money Talks
A few years ago, a local taxpayers’ group derailed a reasonable budget proposal by aggressively taking its case to the public and the media. The district sat passively on the sidelines and found itself on the wrong side of public opinion. Misinformation becomes the truth when no one responds directly to it. Be proactive by getting the district’s message out first and frequently. Communicating your budget to the public is key to increasing support for it.
May 2005
Data and Dollars
Every year, it seems, school districts are expected to do more with less. That’s not an easy task, given the complexity of public education and the tight budgets facing many districts. Yet, despite these obstacles, there is a way schools can save millions of dollars—without slashing spending or cutting personnel. The answer lies in how they manage their special education programs.
May 2005
The Case of Precinct 5
Trying to finger the culprit in a failed school finance election can be like tracking down the criminal in TV’s Cold Case Files or one of the many CSI or Law and Order clones. There’s a problem to solve, a trail of clues, and a team of persistent investigators who want to get at the facts. This is the case of Precinct 5.
April 2005
Equity in School Funding
Providing an equitable education to all children is a tricky legal and fiscal balancing act. For more than three decades, many legal and educational theorists have been dissatisfied with the way states fund their schools. Most states use systems based on local property taxes to obtain and distribute money to school districts. Property-wealthy school districts generally have more money to spend than poorer districts. In some states, they spend up to 10 times more.
October 2004
Budget Red Flags
One day in the summer of 2002, Oakland, Calif., schools superintendent Dennis Chaconas received a call from the district's chief financial officer telling him that the school district did not have enough cash to meet the next payroll. The only way to meet payroll, the financial officer told Chaconas, was to default on a loan payment, which would put the district in technical insolvency and, ultimately, in bankruptcy.
May 2004
Anatomy of a Budget Cut
School districts across the nation are tightening their belts in the wake of the current economic downturn, hoping to avoid large financial shortfalls that can be devastating—not just to the schools, but to the entire community. It is during times like these that the school board must do everything in its power to retain credibility with the community. Knee-jerk decisions about the fate of programs and personnel can have a boomerang effect on your district and your community for years to come.
November 2003
Fear of Falling
A triple whammy is hitting school districts around the nation: severely reduced revenues; outdated and cumbersome funding formulas; and the fallout from fiscal mismanagement and inconsistent leadership. In the face of tight budgets, governors, state legislatures, educators, and researchers, advocates of all stripes are searching for better methods to pay for public schools and looking for more effective ways to engage the public in the issue. And they are laying the groundwork for political battles ahead over larger reforms that go beyond current-year bailouts and short-term fixes.
May 2003
Blowing in the Wind
Times are tough all over, but never have they been tougher for the public schools. Gone are the balmy days when many states had enough revenues to cut taxes, bolster rainy day funds, and increase funding for education. Now, as the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) succinctly puts it, State budgets are under siege.
May 2003
Beyond the Bake Sale
While public schools have been pushing candy sales, car washes, and other nickel-and-dime fund-raising efforts, private schools, colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations have been busy raising billions of dollars each year from corporations, foundations, the government, and private citizens. Fund-raising in America is big business, but public schools have been slow to cash in on it.
May 2003
New Funding Challenges
Public education faces new demands and expectations on many fronts, and school finance is no exception. In particular, familiar ways of financing schools are called into question by five major developments: calls to link finance to student achievement; changing demographics; a more competitive marketplace for teachers; new technologies; and demands for more diverse education providers and for more parental choice. "Business as usual" in school finance will not be enough to meet these new challenges.
May 2002
Who Holds the Purse Strings
School finance was once the clear and protected domain of board members and superintendents. Schools received money from state and federal governments. With few limitations, and most of those on federal funds, the school board then decided how the money should be spent. State authority, however, is now eclipsing local authority in school finance matters. If the trend toward state centralized financial power continues, school boards could see themselves edged out of their roles as citizen overseers of their schools.
May 2002
The New Finance
It is time to overhaul the way states finance education. The national emphasis on teaching all students to high standards has produced a need for new models of state finance systems that align school funding more closely to standards-based reform aimed at high outcomes for all students. The new finance systems should rest on a concept of quality education for all children, not basic or minimum education.
October 2002
Financing Facilities
Construction costs eat up a sizable portion of school budgets. In 1997-98, the nation's school districts spent $36 billion for capital outlay and debt service to build new schools, to undertake major renovation projects, and to construct ancillary facilities. Considering how much money is at stake, it's not surprising that everyone from teachers to taxpayers and from school personnel to state legislators has an interest in who pays—and how much is paid—for school construction.
October 2002