Unraveling the Mystery of School Finance

Unraveling the Mystery of School Finance—For Superintendents and Top Administrators

Educational leaders in California have a generational opportunity to leverage historic levels of federal and state funding for the programs and services that are valued most at the local level. Today’s decisions are even more critical as the once robust economy is beginning to soften.  

The leaders who have the greatest success are the ones who best understand the challenges and opportunities as they are presented. Our current funding model, with the additional layers of federal pandemic dollars, is neither simple, nor straightforward. The purpose of this webinar is to take the complexities of school finance and distill them so superintendents and other top administrators of local educational agencies (LEAs) can use financial information to make improved policy decisions. With decades of experience in school agency finance and governance, top experts from the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) and School Services of California Inc. have teamed up to bring this must-attend event to school agency nonfinancial administrators.

Webinar Content

The format of this webinar is specifically designed for superintendents and top administrators to focus on the critical aspects of understanding your LEA’s finances to improve policy decision making. Topics include:

• A planning and budget development cycle that fosters the connection to educational goals and strategies in the Local Control and Accountability Plan to budget items
• Determining a healthy reserve and communicating about reserves to stakeholders
• Understanding multiyear financial projections and evaluating your financial status
• Planning staffing needs and the budget impact of staffing decisions
• The latest in collective bargaining and strategies for managing the financial impact
• Monitoring and controlling the budget to avoid surprises
• Understanding the impact of cash deferrals
• Making appropriate use of one-time funds
• Best observed practices in school financial management and how to stay out of trouble