School District Budgeting Best Practices Framework

Transcription

1 School District Budgeting Best Practices Framework An Overview of the Joint Project of GFOA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation presented with permission from GFOA Carol MacLeod, CFO Lake County Schools S1

2 Spending Money Smartly In June 2013, Lake County Schools was one of four School Districts selected nationally to participate in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Spending Money Smartly project. The grant has provided Lake County Schools with an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the budget process. S2

3 EngageLCS EngageLCS was born, with the mission of aligning resources to support key teacher, leader, and student directed initiatives in order to develop students who are C 2 Ready prepared for college and a career. One of the cornerstones of the process is the concept of aligning budgetary decisions to the instructional priorities with a laser focus on student achievement. S3

4 EngageLCS This process deliberately brings the Finance and Academic sides of the District to the table to make informed and data driven budget decisions that will support the instructional priorities. With the assistance and guidance or our consultant partners, our task was to develop a 3 year Strategic Financial Plan and then link it to our Budget. The first Strategic Finance Plan was approved by the Board in December 2013 and is now the basis for the Budget. S4

5 Press Release Chicago, Illinois May 23, 2013 The Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) announced that it has received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the purpose of identifying and promoting best budgeting practices for schools and community colleges. The research project, which is scheduled for completion in February 2015, will develop and implement criteria for GFOA s Distinguished Budget Presentation Award program to incentivize school districts and community colleges to integrate resource alignment best practices into their budget processes. S5

6 GFOA Award for Best Practices in School Budgeting GFOA has begun a project to update and enhance its Distinguished Budget Presentation Award Program to incorporate resource allocation best practices specific for K 12 school districts and community colleges. As part of this project award criteria for K 12 and community colleges will be updated for budgets prepared for the fiscal year. S6

7 GFOA Award for Best Practices in School Budgeting Over two years, GFOA s Research and Consulting Center will be working with practitioners, researchers, and other education finance experts to identify the best ways for K 12 and community college institutions to leverage the budget process to align their resources to student outcomes. In addition, GFOA will also develop award criteria that allow districts and colleges to demonstrate process excellence and receive the recognition they deserve. S7

8 GFOA Award for Best Practices in School Budgeting GFOA will then observe the outputs in practice through a number of pilot projects in order to test the best practices and award criteria. Based on the lessons learned during the pilots, GFOA will finalize the criteria and incorporate them into the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award program criteria for the budget year. S8

9 GFOA Partners in Practice Pilot Program One of the most important components of the project is the Partners in Practice Pilot Program. GFOA has selected six public school districts and six community colleges from across the country to test the budgeting best practices and the award criteria as they prepare their budgets. Lake County Schools is one of the Partners in Practice S9

10 Nine Categories of Award Criteria organized in four Dimensions Global Strategy 1. Budget Process Management 2. Environmental Scan and Analysis 3. Setting Goals 4. Developing Strategies Finance 5. Identifying Financial Position 6. Evaluating & Prioritizing Expenditures to Enact the Strategies 7. Allocating Resources Results 8. Presenting Financial Results 9. Evaluating Results S10

11 Managing the Budget Process Policies & principles to guide the budget Principles: Broad guidance on what the budget process should accomplish and are accessible to everyone. Policies: More technical how to guidance Criteria for success of the budget process Use a governance system Time, cost, and quality criteria Identify communications strategy How the process works, how to get involved, what happened and why S11

12 Environmental Scan & Analysis Analyze current levels of student learning Comparison against standards, relative improvement, and trends Long term forecasting Financial and enrollment Analyzing the essential supports of student learning Instructional guidance, professional capacity, school learning climate, etc. S12

13 Setting Goals SMARTER framework Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time Bound, Exciting, and Resourced Goals setting should be collaborative and inclusive of a range of stakeholders Goals should take a long term perspective (3 5 years), but should also identify interim milestones. Goals should be developed at the district level and translated to school site goals. S13

14 Developing Strategies Root cause analysis Don t settle for symptomatic causes Research promising practices Identify a limited number of Guiding Practices the district might move forward with. Guiding practice is similar to Theory of Action. Evaluate choices Limit the number of choices and make the consequences clear Develop a Plan of Action Describes action steps to implement the practices. Completes the loop on strategy S14

15 Identifying Financial Position Evaluating & prioritizing expenditures to enact the strategies Allocating resources Cost structure analysis Starting point for discussion of trade offs and may spur investigation into new ways of providing services Cost effectiveness measurement Measures of cost effectiveness are an emerging practice Academic Return on Investment S15

16 Communicating Resource Allocations and Outcomes Tell the story of the budget Challenges Goals Initiatives Revenue and expenditures Highlight impact of initiatives Address other key financial issues like reserves, debt Evaluating the Results Monitoring Implementation Continuous Improvement Budget process post mortem Adjust for next year S16

17 What is different about this Award? 100% focused on School Districts Budget process is a major part of the criteria Presentation is secondary There will be a 2 year phase in. Budgets beginning in 2018 would need to meet the new criteria. S17

18 Questions?? Contact: Carol MacLeod, CFO Lake County Schools S18