Reimagining the K-12 Business Office of the Future
Last month, I was finally on the road again, connecting with school district leaders face-to-face. It felt great. After so many Zoom meetings, it was energizing to join the Connecticut Association of School Business Officials (CASBO) Conference to present a keynote session on Reimagining the K-12 Business Office of the Future. It was fitting, too, since I was there to talk about scenario and contingency planning for the future, which, certainly, has felt relevant during the pandemic.
K-12 Business Offices of the Future: From Data Keepers to Strategic Leaders
As I shared with the CASBO audience, when thinking about the school business office of the future, there is one overarching shift that encompasses the changes that will need to take place: the business office of the future will shift from a place that simply collects and reports financial data (the keeper of information) to ultimately become the place that school and district leaders turn to for help in making their most important decisions (the source of insight).
CFOs and financial leaders will provide the information others need to make better decisions, especially around teaching and learning issues, not just around staffing and operations. More will be asked of the business office. Its scope will expand beyond managing finances to helping manage the other critical and scarce resource – time. Helping school and district leaders maximize the impact of every instructional minute during the day will be of equal importance to getting the most from every dollar.
Four Ways School Business Offices Will Evolve
Making the shift from data keepers to strategic leaders who help manage critical and scarce resources will require new functions and expertise. School business offices of the future will be champions of Academic Return on Investment, have expertise in cost-effective teaching and learning, manage time through effective scheduling, and leading multi-year planning. Here’s why.
Championing Academic Return on Investment (A-ROI)
It can be hard to tell which investments are actually leading to positive outcomes and for which kids, but if districts are going to raise achievement despite limited resources, it is critical to know if good ideas are actually getting good results. With the right expertise, it is possible measure both cost and effectiveness and to know what works, at what cost, and for which children. The business office of the future will help lead robust analyses that determine the Academic Return on Investment (A-ROI) of key strategies, large-scale interventions, and new initiatives.
The business office of the future will have the expertise to lead these studies, set and collect baseline data, measure and analyze growth, and calculate the cost per student served. Ultimately, they will pair results with a cost to fuel an A-ROI based discussion about whether a given program should be kept, expanded, fixed, streamlined, or eliminated. Certainly, other departments will be a part of the A-ROI team, but the business office will lead the way, providing guidance, encouragement, and expertise.
Offering Expertise in Cost-Effective Teaching and Learning
In addition to tracking spending and projecting costs as is already commonplace, the school business office of the future will be called upon for wisdom and advice on how to do things more cost effectively. For sure, in some districts the business office already does this when it comes to food service, maintenance, and other operation – but the majority of the district budget is devoted to teaching and learning.
Principals and curriculum leaders will need help, guidance, and direction from the business office on how to stretch the impact of their budget and do more with less. They may want to know how much is really spent on PD, exactly how many math teachers are needed, or how to reduce the cost of special education. School business officials of the future will bring precise measurement and analysis to help answer these questions if schools are to thrive in the future.
Managing Time, Not Just Money
Money is not the only scarce resource in a school. Time is precious, too. Business offices of the future should partner with school leadership to create better schedules, not just better budgets. Better school schedules save money and raise achievement.
At the elementary level, doing district-wide scheduling, rather than school-by-school, maximizes the efficiency of the sharing specialists like art and PR teachers. Some districts have saved $50,000 a school by scheduling collectively rather than building-by-building. No reduction in how much time students received specials was involved, just some centralized planning and expertise added. At the secondary level, scheduling and staffing are completely intertwined. Joint effort between the school leadership and the business office could reveal opportunities to expand electives and add interventions at no extra cost.
Housing scheduling expertise in the business office reflects the significant intersection of staffing and scheduling and reinforces the partnership between the business staff and the teaching and learning team.
Leading Multi-Year Planning
Much of what is done today focuses on the current year (tracking spending) and next year (building the budget). As enrollments shift, structural deficits become common place, and state budgets are stressed, districts will need to think and plan over a three-to-five-year time frame, as do most private organizations of similar sizes to school districts. The business office of the future will lead the way.
This will likely include more sophisticated forecasting and creating scenario plans, not just a single forecast. For schools, both revenues and expenses are forecast based on enrollment trends, the growth of charters, state funding predictions, and estimates of federal grants. Expenses are also mapped out years into the future based on detailed strategic plans and priorities as well as estimates for changes in health, retirement, and energy costs.
Given the number of moving parts in these forecasts, a range of scenarios should be considered and contingency plans built around the most likely possibilities. This will allow district leaders to take the long-term perspective when planning each year’s budget. Tomorrow may uncertain but within limits, and preparedness counts.
Becoming the Business Office of the Future
Managing the district of the future is going to be a lot harder because what is being asked of our schools is a lot more challenging. To rise to this challenge, the business office will have to evolve as well. This will include learning new skills and must be supported by growing the department.
Leading the charge on Academic Return on Investment will require a bit more expertise in cost accounting, helping ensure that every minute is used as well as every dollar. This will require expertise in scheduling, scenario planning, and forecasting, all valued skills of the future.
The breadth of expertise required and the additional responsibilities predicted suggests that more people and different types of people will be working in the business office of the future: perhaps retired principals will head up a part-time scheduling office, former private sector cost accountants will sit beside the payroll office, and maybe even a former teacher with a financial bent will help guide efforts to increase the cost effectiveness of reading or summer school.
This leads to the final and most important change – the need for districts to view these new functions as mission-critical and worthy of greater investment, despite tight finances. The mindset that any dollar not spent in the classroom should be trimmed must change. Instead, success in the future requires that every dollar is spent for the classroom. The difference is significant and best for students. Districts will need to spend money to save money and invest outside the classroom to improve what happens inside the classroom.
Investing $75,000 in a highly skilled scheduler can free up $250,000 - $500,000 from efficient staffing in a district of 5,000 students. Spending $100,000 for the capacity to know if co-teaching is raising achievement or not could shift millions into other interventions in a district with 20,000 students. Having staff that can analyze and help recommend cost-effective strategies for summer school might double the number of students served without increasing costs.
While the first reaction of some school boards and others might be “we cannot afford those investments,” in reality districts cannot afford not to make these investments in an era of sustained tight resources and growing needs.
Tomorrow will be challenging, but with thoughtful planning, an open mind, and added expertise, the business office will help schools do the most good for the most students with every dollar they have.