Cost Savings and Efficiencies: Best Practices
MASBO Executive Director Dave Verdolino moderated while
Plymouth SBO Gary Costin and Newton Asst. Supt. Sandra Guryan spoke to award-winning
initiatives in their districts:
Gary Costin: Plymouth is investing heavily in solar
(and currently uses a local 23-acre solar field to provide significant power
resources). Expected life is 20 years, by which time they anticipate other
technologies to take over.
Sandra Guryan: Newton is managing increasing
enrollments that are geographically inconsistent across the district, aging
facilities, and inadequate space for programming, by continuing quality planning
designed to address these challenges. Elements of consideration include funding, (local and state), school sizes, swing space, and
potential residential development. Desired outcomes include up-to-date teaching
and learning facilities, right-sizing capacity, maximizing state funding,
phasing/continuing use of swing space, maintenance and optimization of neighborhood
schools, balancing intra-district feeder patterns, elimination/reduction of modular
classrooms, and improvement of energy systems. The timeline reaches to FY34. Planning involves a continuous, dynamic, and evolving cycle performed in
conjunction with city departments and the district’s strategic plan. A detailed annual update is reviewed by the district.
What School
Committees Should Ask from their School Business Officials (SBO's)
Moderated by Worcester’s SBO Brian Allen and
with panelists Tracy O’Connell Novick (Worcester SC) and Alan Himmelburger
(Blackstone-Milville Regional Supt.). They spoke to “the need for timely and
comprehensive communication about the district’s financial condition and budget
awareness.”
Purpose of the budget: describe how money is being
allocated in order to accomplish district priorities and manage spending
throughout the year.
Notes:
·
Budgets are easily misinterpreted, hard to
understand, and easily ridiculed.
·
The Committee must understand where the $ comes
from, adopt a process for moving it, and determine the public process necessary
to explain and build consensus.
·
Zero-based budgets are about 90% pre-determined since such a significant portion high is salaries.
The ideal budget document:
·
Includes more narrative than numbers (and
narratives can be written in the fall)
·
Explains $, enrollment, trends, goals, and
objectives
·
Describes how resources are tied to decisions
·
Contains charts revealing history and
projections
·
Informs the Committee of decisions that need to
be made
·
Includes other items the Committee defines
·
Details budget assumptions
·
May provide a PowerPoint summary, but that is
not the budget – must be detail
·
Should include things like Foundation Budget
Review Commission information, state budget impacts, grants, etc.
Another support your SBO can provide: help quantifying the
impact on the district of legislation.
Roles and Responsibilities of School Committees in their
Communities: Budget Development, Implementation, and Monitoring
Co-moderated and presented by MASC
Field Rep Jim Hardy and MASBO Executive Director Dave Verdolino. While they led the discussion, the majority
of dialogue was among and between attendees, offering the advantage of learning
the questions/concerns of other districts.
·
It’s the Committee’s fiduciary responsibility to
watch out for taxpayers’ money
·
The passing of budgets requires trust - how is
that built? Over time and with credibility and accountability.
·
The budget is a policy instrument that:
o
Is approved and changed by local officials, who
also approve expenditures (warrants)
o
Sets district priorities by funding them (or
not)
o
Supports personnel policy including collective
bargaining, equal opportunity/discrimination, and the employment process
o
Supports student related policies/services like
fees
o
Affirms policies in grants (like federal
programs)
·
Administration will generally present the full
detail to the Committee for budget deliberations / the Committee generally
avoids going into discrete detail in order to maintain its role appropriately
and avoid unnecessary involvement in intra-school and intra-program matters.
MASC recommends:
o
That line items clearly define major
categories and be sufficiently detailed to monitor policy and give building
administrators flexibility to adjust spending needs within their buildings as
long as they don’t change district policy
o
Working with budget data at three degrees of
detail: fine detail (to develop the overall district budget); official internal
budget and policy document used to periodically monitor; and the generally used
budget (in reasonable detail) for official municipal review.
