For the second year in a row, GFOA hosted a luncheon for school districts to discuss GFOA’s best practices in budgeting for school districts. This year’s event featured four school districts – Portland Public Schools, Dayton City Public Schools, Upper Moreland Township School District, and Atlanta Public Schools – that have been on the journey toward optimizing the alignment between their limited resources and their student achievement goals. The districts discussed some of the challenges they faced, including the difficulty of prioritizing the many different, yet worthy, goals that their districts could pursue; changing the budget in a political environment; and grappling with limited resources. They also described the successes they’ve achieved, such as creating a partnership between the finance and academic offices; changing the tone of the budget the conversation to emphasize the effect of budget decisions on children; and building a team within the district to carry this work forward.
Learn more about the best practices for school budgeting at www.gfoa.org/school-budgeting. You can also visit SmarterSchoolSpending.org for case studies, tools, and templates to help you implement the best practices.
Monday, May 23, 2016