A Strategic Role for School Finance Officers

In areas of payroll, purchasing, document management and more, evolving school business practices bolster the academic side of the ledger

Several years ago, a teacher who supervised one of the student clubs at Ossining High School grew anxious after learning from the school district’s purchasing agent that he could not use the club’s allotted funds to purchase items on his own. He was so upset about the need to use a purchase order for anything his student club might need that he requested to meet with me at the central office because I supervised the purchasing agent.

The teacher told me he felt discouraged by a process that requires all purchases in the school system, large and small, be made with a purchase order, slowing down the acquisition. During our meeting, I explained that the district requires the purchase orders to ensure that purchases are aligned with the district and state policies. Items above a particular dollar value require three bids while high-cost products and services require a formal bidding process.

As the chief financial officer, I told the teacher I considered it my duty to work with him to expedite the process and suggested ways in which we could do that while still following the district’s purchasing policy.

The collaborative tone had a major impact on his perceptions of the business office as a roadblock to a dedicated teacher’s support of his students.

Assorted Job Titles

School districts’ business offices often are described as antiquated, bureaucratic, confusing and inflexible. Teachers, school administrators and even central-office administrators do their best to avoid interactions with business office staff.

I think that view may be changing in a few places, such as our 4,900-student district located 45 minutes north of New York City.

When I attend nationwide conferences, I notice that the title of school business officials varies from state to state. In New York, we typically carry the title of treasurer, school business manager/director or assistant superintendent for business. But in other areas the title has evolved to chief financial officer.

In their article for the Center for American Progress, “The New Education CFO, From Scorekeeper to Strategic Leader,” Don Hovey and Ulrich Boser promote the notion of the strategic chief financial officer. More specifically, they say, “high-performing districts need a strategic CFO, an individual who brings to bear the whole strategic brain — both the academic and financial halves of the brain — to inform key decisions and to partner with their instructional peers to reallocate resources to high-performing, fiscally sustainable purposes.”

Practices Evolve

The business of running a school district is akin to managing a multimillion-dollar Fortune 500 company, except our stockholders are our board of education members and our service is to our students, faculty, parents and community members. So how does the CFO become a strategist? Before we answer this question, let’s revisit the school district business office.

If we are being truthful about our profession, we readily admit we don’t like a lot of change to our systems — and for good reason. The school district business office undergoes internal risk assessments, claims auditing, external auditing and state audits. Overburdened taxpayers scrutinize every school tax dollar spent in an effort to uncover inefficiencies or alleged waste to reduce their tax burdens.

At the same time, one small change in business office practices for efficiency’s sake can result in a conflict of duties that put the integrity of the entire business office in question. So why should the school business operation evolve? Because it’s time. We can’t expect our peers to respect our practices when we have not looked at doing our business in a more strategic way.

So where do we start at bringing a more strategic role to our duties?

Pursuing Efficiency

The chief financial officer should evaluate business office systems to identify efficiencies wherever possible. When people think of actions taken in the name of efficiency by the business office, it usually is connected with someone losing his or her job. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

Of course, when an organization experiences retirements, one always should evaluate the position to determine if it should be filled as is or if the duties can be more effectively performed in different ways. The question is not always how I can reduce staff. Instead the question ought to be how can I reduce staff time on inefficient tasks so they have more time to commit to the important duties.

There are several areas in which business office duties and tasks can be handled in a more strategic way.

• PAYROLL. Financial accounting systems in school districts offer some payroll services through the web. Simple tasks such as checking attendance balances, making W-9 deduction changes and viewing paycheck stubs can be performed online.

Instead of calling the payroll office for routine requests and awaiting a response, employees can access payroll information 24 hours a day. Web-based systems also improve the customer service provided to teachers and other staff members.

Strategic CFOs in K-12 education understand that the business office provides a service. Our customers consist of community and staff members. We must continue to examine ways to be responsive to our customers through responsiveness and accessibility.

• PURCHASING. School district purchases over a defined amount require that the school district purchasing agent prepare a formal request for bids. Towns, villages and counties are typically held to the same standard. Depending upon the item(s) to be purchased, it can take a significant amount of time to solicit bidders and evaluate bid responses.

Many states have passed legislation allowing their towns, villages, counties and school districts to piggyback on one another’s bids statewide and even nationwide. Participation in these bids increases economies of scale, which drives down costs and reduces the purchasing agent’s time required for this task. As a result, there may no longer be a need to employ a full-time purchasing agent. The part-time position can be moved to another department where there is a higher need.

Expanding the number of vendors from which services can be purchased is a fiscally responsible strategy for the purchasing department. Identifying ways to reduce staff members’ time on tasks allows for human resources to be deployed elsewhere. This strategy not only increases efficiency and saves money, but it also provides for additional staffing in areas of greater need.

• LEADERSHIP TEAM/MANAGEMENT GROUP. The school business office staff often is separate in thought and physical location from instructional staff yet the latter play an integral role in the evolving nature of the school business office. School business staff should be empowered to be part of the vision of the district and the work of the leadership team.

In Ossining, the Business Office Leadership Team, or BOLT, was established to discuss business office items, but we also discuss strategies to improve the district’s business office practices and, more importantly, the financial future of the district. Strategies for doing so are outlined in a task and project management system we use called ”Any.Do.” Planning tools such as Google Calendars are used to create subcalendars for budget preparation.

Also, the use of technology can enhance planning and collaboration. The CFO in education understands that by helping staff to see themselves as leaders can lead to a high-performing team of strategic thinkers.

• WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT. How can we cultivate a culture of fiscal responsibility and transparency and leadership if our websites look like a Word document populated with links to outdated information?

The link to the business office website should be representative of a well-organized, customer-friendly, professional office. Inexpensive website development programs such as Wix.com can be seamlessly linked to the school district’s website.

• DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT. Although there have been advances in technology, a school district’s business office still can be inundated with paper due to record retention require-ments. However, records management software can be used to make searching for information and retrieving documents much easier.

In Ossining, we only have a few file cabinets. Many of our documents are kept in a web-based document management system called Square 9. This system not only stores documents for us but it also cross searches over many different document types to find relevant information for a given search topic.

• CUSTOMER SERVICE AND ACCESSIBILITY. We use Live Chat to quickly respond to questions live as they come in. This was especially helpful during the day of the school district’s budget vote because community members could get their budget questions immediately answered as they prepared to cast their vote.
• CREATIVITY. Someone once said that in every difficulty resides an opportunity. I truly believe this.

When we were faced with budget cuts years ago, we had to find ways to make budget cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. We were successful in doing this using creative strategies.

Instead of hiring bus attendants through our school transportation company, we hired our own bus attendants at a fraction of the cost. Health care costs were slashed as a result of moving to a New York state health care plan. Additional transportation costs were reduced through competitive bidding and more flexible bid requirements.

Creativity in difficult fiscal times is arguably the most important attribute of a strategic CFO in K-12 education.

Dynamic Workflow

A school district’s business office can be cultivated into a team of leaders, movers, shakers and visionaries. Leading the way in how we run the business of public school education, moving toward dynamic workflow systems, shaking up the status quo and becoming visionaries is how it ought to be and not how it is. The strategic CFO strives to make this vision a reality.