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
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 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
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
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
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
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