EDLD 5342- Superintendent’s Roles and Responsibilities in the Budgeting Process

The superintendent is ultimately responsible for overseeing the budgeting process; however, in medium to large districts, the superintendent must rely on a business manager to handle the more intricate details of determining district revenue as well as predict expenditures.  While the details of the district budgeting process may not be part of the superintendent’s daily tasks, establishing processes to communicate the budgeting process as well as gain input from key stakeholders are part of the superintendent’s responsibilities. 

According my superintendent, the success of the budget adoption process depends largely on the superintendent’s ability to communicate of all factors affecting the budget.  Additionally, the creation of clear, concise goals that explains all expenditures works to garner support of a finalized budget or any required amendments. 

EDLD 5342: Additional Stakeholder Input in the Budgeting Process

Additional Stakeholder Input in the Budgeting Process-

Ø  Central Office Administrators and Staff

o   These key individuals will provide input regarding the budget specific to their program(s).    They will submit their budget, along with budget codes, to the CFO for review.

Ø  Principals

o   Principals guide the budget setting process at their campus.  They are responsible for the creation of a campus improvement plan (CIP) that should guide the budgeting process.  The body which creates the CIP is the SBDM (site-based decision making committee); however, the responsibility of the task lies with the principal.  The budget and CIP must be turned in to the Senior Director of Academic Support who will send the documents to the Superintendent and CFO for approval.

Ø  Site Based Decision Making (SBDM) Committees

o   These committees should exist at every campus.  According to Education Code 11.253(e),” the campus-level committee shall be involved in decisions in the areas of planning, budgeting, curriculum, staffing patterns, staff development, and school organization. “

Ø  District Improvement Committee

o   This body reviews the BOT (Board of Trustees) goals and works to make goals for the district.  These goals are reviewed by the Superintendent and her Cabinet) to fashion the District Improvement Plan (DIP).

Ø  Teacher Organizations

o   Members of several teacher organizations are members both in campus SBDMs and the District Improvement Committee.  They represent their organization through these activities.

Ø  Key Stakeholders

o   These individuals are involved in the goal setting and budgeting process through site based decision making as well as the district improvement committee.  Additionally, Town Hall meetings are held to inform key stakeholders.

Ø  Board of Trustees

o   The BOT creates the goals for the district.  Once these goals are created, the Superintendent listens to the Board goals.  The Superintendent works with the Board finalize the budget for the district, giving several budgeting options.  The BOT and the Superintendent work together to finalize the district budget and include additional district professionals when input is needed.

Upon speaking to the Superintendent about the budgeting process, one can begin to see that the process must include key stakeholders from throughout the district community to ensure all goals are included and funded in the district budget.  Additionally, the budgeting process is not a once a year endeavor.  It is a back and forth process between several organizations within the district and evolves over the year before its adoption.  Tis process is even more critical in times when the budget is projected to vary greatly from one year to the next.  My district has relied heavily on this process of involving many key stakeholders in the budgeting process to ensure communication of a decreasing budget and providing a reason why the district must make budget cuts.

EDLD 5342- Review of TEA Budgeting Guidelines

The TEA Budgeting Guidelines walks the reader through all aspects of the district budgeting process.  A school district budget is a document that describes the allocation of resources to achieve stated goals.  This document even lists indicators (SEA- Service Efforts and Accomplishments) for a district to use when evaluating a district budget.  Many districts, however, have a difficult time properly identifying district needs.  To prevent this sort of oversight, the TEA budgeting guidelines provides multiple sources of templates as well well-articulated district processes for the school district to follow when planning, preparing, and evaluating the district budget.  I will now switch to a question and answer format to further describe my reflections of the TEA Budgeting Guidelines.

Why do school districts have budgets?

District budgets allow citizens and taxpayers to hold district officials accountable for the use of district funds.  There are many budgeting requirements spelled out in Texas law as well as legal board policy. 

Is there only one way to set a budget?

No, the TEA budget guidelines describe several ways to establish a school district budget.  GPISD uses a line-item approach.  This is the most simplistic approach; however, many districts have found this process burdensome because it requires the Board to approve budget amendments.  It does afford a great deal of district-level control of expenditures.  Because of this, we have found this to be the preferred method.  Additionally, one other downside of this type of budgeting is that it provides little useful information for decision makers.  Expenditures are listed only by category and not by actual expense.  If given a choice, I would choose to use the zero-based budgeting process.   The process of ranking goals based on a ranking process is ideal in a time where budgets are decreasing.  Additionally, in this type of budgeting, district expenditures are directly linked to district goals.  I believe this would more closely align with the reason Texas school districts have budgets in the first place, to allow citizens and taxpayers to hold district officials accountable for the use of district funds

Who is responsible for setting the budget?

The Superintendent and Board of Trustees decide on the delegation of budget-setting responsibilities.  The TEA Budgeting Guidelines gives a detailed template describing stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities.  Additionally, this document lists procedural guidelines, a calendar of budgeting processes, and another template describing action items and individuals responsible to guide the budget-setting process.

How does a district set the budget?

There must be a public hearing held before the Board adopts the budget.  This hearing occurs after the Superintendent reviews the budget as well as the Board of Trustees.  After the budget is set, the budget must be monitored.  The TEA Budgeting Guidelines provides information of how budgets should be monitored. 

What’s next?

Sometimes budgets must be amended.  There is a procedure described in the TEA Budgeting Guidelines to assist.  Moving forward, school district finance experts are involved in financial forecasting for upcoming years.  The TEA Budgeting Guidelines spends time giving guidance for this process.  This document also includes accounting for funds from grants as well as determining the financial impact of multi-year construction projects.

Final thoughts-

In summary, this document (TEA Budgeting Guidelines) can be used to guide the district budgeting process as well as set budgeting methodology for a district.  The templates contained within this document help to prevent oversight of critical budgeting requirements.

EDLD 5342- Defining and describing a goal driven budget

A goal driven school district budget should be carefully created to realize the shared vision of a given school district.  The budget for any district should be aligned to the school board goals as well as district and campus improvement plans.  Each of the documents should be fashioned with maximum stakeholder input to ensure communication of the budget creation process and to allow multiple entities to contribute.    Additionally, school district budgets should include a process of evaluating goal attainment.  Districts budgets should include funding to support a continual needs assessment to support this endeavor.

As demonstrated in the TASBO Budget Development Power Point, the school district budgeting process should culminate before the beginning of the current fiscal year with a board-approved budget; however, the process should extend the entire year leading up to the state-articulated deadline.  The school district budget should reflect needs uncovered through a continual needs assessment of the prior year’s budget along with consideration for any budgeting adjustments required due to an increase/decrease in the school district funds.  The beginning of the GPISD district improvement plan begins with a statement of most recent student performance data, state and federal accountability indicators, and required compliance measures.  These indicators are followed by an evaluation of needs.  Upon reading the district goals, it is easy to see the goals reflect district improvement needs as well as the maintenance of successful programs. 

School district funding comes from multiple sources.  The district estimates revenue from the state foundation school program and local property taxes.  Federal and funding from private sources should not be forgotten.  Delinquent tax collections, fees money collected from extracurricular services, and grant funding are often much smaller sources of revenue that must be accounted for in the budgeting process.   Forecasting the amounts received from these aforementioned sources are critical to budget planning.  During an interview with the GPISD superintendent, we discussed the impact of recent decreases in state funding of public schools in Texas.  Since majority of any district’s budget funds employee salaries, staffing formulas are dependent on an accurate revenue forecast.  Districts must often reduce staffing when a large budget shortfall is projected.  If a budget shortfall is projected, the district must reduce staffing while still work to achieve district and campus goals.  Communication about these challenges must be communicated to school district community members as well as school district employees.

As discussed in the week 1 lecture of EDLD 5342, the school district budget, just like any other district-level planning document, must include input from all key stakeholders to capture their input as well as communicate the status of the budgeting process.  This is especially important when the budget is forecasted to vary greatly.  In this type of event, district goals and budgets will need to be realigned to adjust for an increase/decrease in revenue.  The budgeting process should start well in advance of final approval right before the beginning of the fiscal year, with the first glimpses of district revenues described through a district budget forecast.  The district and each campus should involve their site-based decision making committee in the goal and budget-setting processes.  Since site-based decision making committees are required to include educators as well as parents and business leaders, a district can ensure that stakeholders from key parts of the school community are involved in the budget process.  Additionally, these individuals will understand the goals of the district as well as the challenges, should the district budget decrease.

EDLD 5395: Final Reflections on Lessons Learned

The superintendent self-assessments were one of the first activities experienced in this course.  They were the first glimpse into the required skills of the competencies needed in the superintendent role.  During this activity we were required to review each competency and guesstimate if we felt this area was a strength or a weak area where we needed growth.  The second assessment then involved completing a Texas superintendent certification assessment.  This exercise was revealing because we could then compare the results of the self-assessment to the areas or strength and weakness revealed through the practice exam.  Many of the course participants reflected on their blogs that they missed questions because they were not considering global perspective when answering the questions. Building Wiki’s and Blogs allows a user to become technologically proficient in an online communication tool.  Wiki’s are great tools to allow multiple individuals contribute to a single body of work, no matter where they are located.  Blogs encouraged collaboration during this first superintendent certification course through reviewing a blog postings of fellow colleagues.    These tools facilitated action research between the members of our superintendent cohort where we all worked together to complete course requirements. This course required all participants to interview their superintendent.  I felt very fortunate that my current superintendent made the time to sit down and talk with me one on one to answer my questions.  The questions I asked were directly aligned to the superintendent competencies.  It was very interesting to hear a practitioner’s view point and as I reflected on this exercise, I began to realize how critical it is to have a working knowledge of the competencies so that they can be used to guide actions and problem solving in an effective manner.  Dr. Williams, Galena Park ISD Interim Superintendent, discussed that a superintendent must have clear yet, concise vision that she and all members of the community can communicate.  If the vision is too complicated or unclear, the message will get lost.  The superintendent intern plan was one of the most time consuming exercises because it required the application and understanding of each of the superintendent competencies to create a relevant activity.  This exercise was fruitful because we were required to post the document to our Wiki and then were required to comment on one another’s work.  Additionally, we were required to meet with our site supervisor the following week to further review the working document.  The culminating activity required us to meet with our Lamar program supervisor to further review and discuss the plan.  I am further inspired about this process because I now understand that the internship plan is a working document and open for change.  I truly expect this document to evolve as I progress through the activities and gain further insight into the process. As I reflect on each of these activities, I realize that this course is a very worthwhile opener to a certification course.  I now better understand the skills required of a superintendent and I have a better grasp on areas where I need to grow.  This program is much more meaningful for me because of this first course because I was guided to dig through each of the competencies and apply this knowledge to formulating an internship plan.  I further augmented this knowledge through interacting with my fellow classmates to give and receive feedback on course assignments.  I look forward to expanding my knowledge through the remainder of the program.

Superintedent Professional Development Plan Review

A professional development plan should include activities that address each of the three competency domains.  Specifically, the plan should address areas of needed growth demonstrated in the superintendent self-assessments taken at the beginning of the first course of the preparation program.   Additionally, the plan should incorporate the evolving needs of the superintendent so that they are informed of current trends in education and state law. 

Presently, the state’s funding of schools is of great concern.  Learning to properly inform trustees as well as the larger community will be critical to a school district’s financial viability.  Additionally, as the state’s political landscape changes, learning to guide voters to common understanding of the need for increased state funding of schools will ultimately result in increased taxation.  Keeping voters informed of the need for increased taxes will likely result in the success of increased funding for school districts.  Professional development to build this skill set must be included in a professional development plan.

As the state and federal accountability and assessment programs evolve, superintendents must navigate and inform all key stakeholders on the need for change.  Professional development must occur that will inform the superintendent with operating knowledge of what the change is and how it will impact the district’s instructional programs.  Additionally, collaborating with other superintendents addressing how they are meeting these goals will be a critical aspect of development. 

Developing a professional development plan that addresses continuing as well as changing needs to the superintendent is critical to success.  I look forward to developing as well as experiencing this on-going process of learning.

Revised Intern Plan based on Site Supervisor feedback

A conference with my site supervisor, Elizabeth Lalor, Senior Director, was held on Wednesday, September 14^th, 2011 which took place over about an hour.  During this meeting I reviewed each of the activities and tied them back to a competency.  We also discussed the activities themselves to ensure the proper resources were listed.  We both decided that I should re-organize the list of activities by due date to facilitate timely completion.  Additionally we reviewed the site supervisor agreement letter along with a description of the site supervisor assignment description. 

We spent a great deal of time discussing the required strengths of a superintendent and analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of previous superintendents, as we saw it.  We then compared our perceptions to a description of the competencies.  We then examined my practice assessment and examined the areas of needed growth determined by the practice test.  We reviewed the activities and searched for appropriate activities to align internship experience with needed growth areas.  After the conference my plan was revised to reflect the needed changes.