You might have seen over on the (soul) Patch.com or insidenova.com that the School Board has passed a resolution rejecting the City Council's "categorized" budget. You might wonder what the heck that means and why it is important. I suppose that you might also not wonder about it. It's a bit of an arcane corner of the world but for those of you that are interested, here ye are:
The City Council is allowed to budget money for the schools in two methods: the first is a lump sum allocation that simply says "here's your money, do your best with our precious tax dollars". The second method is the categorized budget where funds are allocated by what the state calls "Major Categories" (a phrase certainly hammered out in some crazy committee meeting where "Major Categories" was suggested early in the morning but it took the balance of hate day to arrive at the same phrase). Major Categories would be transportation, instruction, administration and on and on.
This year, for the first time ever, the Council allocated the school board budget by major categories. This was done for several reasons not the least of which was concern that the School Board would unilaterally take some of that money and buy an administration building. There isn't all that much support on Council yet for such a move. Subsequent to the Council's action, I received a letter from the School Board indicating that they object to this method of allocation. They cite several reasons with the most important one being that if they want to move money from one category to another during the course of the year, they'll have to come to Council in order to do so. This could happen with some frequency.
They have asked the Council to reconsider this action. For my part, I didn't realize that this would be a consequence of our action and don't view this as a positive development. I share everyone's frustration with the performance of our schools – it's our biggest problem. However, I'm not sure I believe that managing the schools finances for them, however satisfying that might be, makes the division perform better. It occurs to me that if you want an organization to perform better, you need better leaders, not more accountants. Hopefully between the election and a new superitendant, we'll get that demand for excellence. I believe we've seen the beginnings of that in the changes the board made to their operations during the course of this budget.
May 30, 2012 at 11:07 am
As noted in my comments under "Open Thread" here, the Council can under Virginia Code appropriate the funds to the Schools by categories…and I listed those. Keep in mind the "consequence" does not exist the School Board will now have the requirement to perform their Quarterly Review & Analysis, then submit their request to shift funds as needed between categories.
You mention the need for better leaders, not more accountants – good point; however, a leader learns and knows you have to manage your resources to accomplish the mission. Money, people, time, facilities & equipment all are those resources. And for the School Leaders that is why there exist the Administration Division where the beancounters will be providing them the data to take to City Council. Failure in leadership is thinking you are the one who has to count the beans – if you have to do it as the Senior Leader, then you need to fire who is doing the accounting and get someone in who can be trusted to do it right and provide you the data.
Now, a "consequence" of this does exist in the Council Finance Committee and the full Council may have to call special meetings in order to expedite the shift in funding.
I agree with you requiring the finances to be managed by categories will not make the division perform better – that is a leadership role like you said. Accountability though must be in ALL aspects of performance and this intentional approach to financial management is a good start.
May 30, 2012 at 3:27 pm
What's wrong with them having to ask the City Council how they can spend the money? I think it's a good thing for the school board to have to ask the City Council each time they would like to switch money around. If it prevents them spending money on an admin building or other expense that is not consistent with the will of the Council or taxpayers that's a good thing. As you have said in the past, the school board does not break down their budget, so, a better accountablity of money being spent is a good thing. If the school board believes there is more accountability and oversight, money will be saved. Will that make all of the difference? Of course not, but it's a start.
May 31, 2012 at 9:43 am
I have pondered this before I send my note off to the School Board….part of their issues seems to be the way they structure their budget doc, pulling things out and trying to categorize would be a task in itself. Although, at least in Excel, an attempt was made to do such by Ellen Purdy during her run for office. She was trying to make sense of that cabash of a document, and sort the items out by category. Of course, what she found was that the totals presented in the powerpoint slideshow could not be all justified. But she managed to put them into categories, and when she showed it to me, it made much clearer sense of where the money was. I ran an Army School Budget for five years and everything there was by category – directs and indirects included. Once a quarter, I sat around a big table in a conference room and we shifted around the bags of bucks as needed. Accountability is never a bad thing.