Superintendent Roles and Responsibilities in Budgeting

I feel I am extremely fortunate to work for a Superintendent who is approachable and willing to help me learn about all the responsibilities he has with open and frank discussion, and budget was no different.  He feels that he needs to be as transparent as possible with stakeholders on where we are, where we want to go and what it is going to take for us to get there.  He is a visionary for improvement and he spends a great deal of time educating the school board about what is going on in the school district.  One of the most important things he feels is having a relationship with the school board that is positive so that he can garner their support for initiatives that are needed.  He begins each school year with areas of concern from each campus and talks to the building principals to determine what it will take to improve the greatest weaknesses and areas of need.  Next, he discusses with the CFO the revenue projections to determine what a reasonable budget will look like.  He then is responsible for working with the CFO and district leaders that adequately meets the needs of our students.  This Superintendent in particular relies a lot on the CFO to crunch the numbers and he “sells” the budget to stakeholders.  He has a very good reputation in the community and is great at striking up conversation and letting people know what is going on.  This has served us well as a district as he has been able to educate people who thought they know how a budget is done to the reality of the difficulty in devising a budget.  As many small districts around us have been struggling we have been able to make improvements to our buildings, meet the needs of our students as well as grow our fund balance under his watch.  He says one of the best things he ever did was begin attending the county tax meetings.  When those people see he is the only Superintendent there he feels he can have a sense of what is going on or coming in the near future and we can plan accordingly.  I hope in my career as a Superintendent I can be as effective as he has been at improving the financial standing of our school district.

     Overall the biggest thing I took from this interview regarding the budget is that it, like many other things in leadership, is heavily based on building relationships.  The Superintendent needs to have an open communication with the board at all times.  They need to know what is going on in the district and the legislature that may affect what we are doing or will need to do in the future.  I now look at the TASA and TexasISD website every couple of days to have a better handle on what is going on in education.  In addition, I have gotten a list from him of all the areas we receive money from so I can begin building relationships with the companies and highest tax payers in the district.  These are the individuals who are providing the most financial support to our endeavors and we need to build relationships with them.  Also, I want to use my people skills to assist in recruiting additional businesses into the area.  I believe my ability to work well with others is going to help me be an effective Superintendent who can also be a financially responsible leader thanks to people like my Superintendent and CFO who allow me to be involve in the process.