“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.” — Jonathan Swift

As a leader in a school district, you should always have money in your head. In your heart should be student learning and well-being. While that heart beats strongly, the head must always be in the money game. Pressure on fiscal resources are increasing while student needs are greater, programs are expanding, family resources are smaller and costs are increasing, attendance is lower and grant funding is tighter. The core business of the district is to improve student learning and well-being, which must be done no matter how tight funds are.

Meeting the current and coming fiscal challenges requires focused action and collaboration throughout the district. There are five basic steps to put into place which should serve you well:

1. A typical district budget is more than 80 percent salary and benefits. So pay attention to those first.

2. Next, get your money GAME (goals, actions, money and evaluation) set. This will align actions with board priorities.

3. Specify line items, “committed dollars” for one-time projects and for expenditures that require more than one year of budget allocation.

4. Keep your eye on the burn rate, the timing of dollars spent during the year.

5. Finally, anticipate year-end balance and in the spring, reallocate dollars to fund summer work for maintenance, repairs, technology, and classroom/library media.

So with fan girl gratitude to Joel Larsgaard, founder and co-host of the “How to Money” podcast, think of the following steps as “How to Money — School District Edition.”

Salaries and benefits comprise more than 80 percent of most school district budgets, so attention needs to be paid to this area. Make sure that your business division has tight position control. Take care to eliminate positions as they are vacated or the work is transformed. Review every position at the cabinet level at least annually. When positions are funded from short-term funds, advertise the positions as temporary or short-term. At a minimum, specify in the job description that the funds are timebound. Monitor positions that are grant-funded, tied to special programs or short-term assignments. Without monitoring, these positions can carry on longer than the associated funds or the specified need. It is difficult to think about how you can do more work with fewer people. Instead, improve and automate processes in order to reduce the number of people needed to do high quality work.

Win the Money GAME: Goals, Action, Money, and Evaluation This is the time to structure budgets and spending so that the resources of the district are aligned to meet board priorities in a manner such that the goals and actions are clear and embedded into the employee support and evaluation systems. Of utmost importance is to start with the goals — the outcomes desired by the board. Only then are resources allocated. Once the goals are selected and the actions agreed, allocate resources to the actions. Then performance to goal must be monitored throughout the year. Ask yourself and your team regularly, “Are we moving toward accomplishment of the goal(s)?”

Goals: Start with goals that specify desired outcomes for student learning and well-being. Undoubtedly, the board has specified areas of student learning to increase. Tie these goals to those board priorities. Tie district manager goals for the year and school plan goals to these priority areas. This way, the goals of the organization are clear and each department, school, and person knows they have a role in achieving them. Staff will see how they contribute to meeting board priorities. The goals should be written in a SMART (specific, measurable, ambitious and achievable, relevant, time bound) goal format (see table).

Use a state-reported indicator where possible. In rare cases, you might use a different indicator if your team does not consider that metric to be valid or your board prefers a different indicator.

When teams are implementing a new practice, you might write a process goal (a district employee will do a certain thing by a certain time in a certain way).

These goals should be brought down to division levels then individual levels and incorporated into manager supervision and support given for meeting the specified goals. The goals should also be tied to the evaluation system and provide a basis for conversation between the manager and their support person throughout the year.

Actions: Once the goals have been specified, the team should agree on what actions are likely to meet the goal. The strategies should be research-based. Action research counts, meaning that an action is acceptable if the team has already tried actions that resulted in the desired goal attainment. Then the team should consider all the elements necessary to put that strategy into place. Does it require professional development, materials, or support from a consultant? Professional learning community gatherings? Parent meetings? Community sessions?

Money: With the goals set and the actions selected, then you tie funding to the actions. Take care to accurately estimate the associated costs of action implementation and the realistic timing of the actions. As you fund actions, start with most restrictive funds first, being careful to comply with the conditions of the funding.

Evaluation: Monitor whether you are on track to meet the goal. Use the progress monitoring to have conversations about the likelihood of meeting the specified goal. Are the actions getting you closer to the desired outcomes? If not, why? Adjust the actions as necessary to achieve the desired results.

Set aside the one-offs Make your department budgeting more efficient by separating certain items as specific line items. This prevents having to boost budgets for a single year. One example is shade structures. You can estimate the cost and make it a line item in the committed section of your budget. This communicates to everyone that funds are set aside for that purpose and allows that specific item to be monitored for completion without artificially increasing a department budget for a span of time.

Watch the burn rate In December, February and April, check to see if money is being spent at a rate that will exhaust the budget before purchasing deadlines arrive. Examine why the spending does not indicate that the budget will be fully used. If the funds will not be expended this year, reallocate those dollars immediately.

Reduce year-end balance There are certain functions in the district that take place almost entirely during the summer months: carpet repair, asphalt, sod renewal, device purchases, network apparatus replacement, and purchase of classroom and school library materials. Rather than budgeting these to the full amount, reallocate year-end balances for these functions, taking care to make sure that the needed materials can be ordered in time for the work to be completed over the summer.

No amount of suggestions will reduce the difficult work of making funding decisions when there is increasing need and decreasing funds. The best approach is to systematize the work, align with board priorities and monitor that goals are being met. The steps provided will make the budgeting process clearer and offer a higher probability of making sure this year’s money is spent for this year’s students.

Renee Hill is the former superintendent of Riverside Unified School District.