Budget season to-do list

We offer these suggestions, based on our work with dozens of states and school systems:

Map wins. Rigorously assess the LOI of each ESSER expenditure. In most districts, these include new interventionist positions, enhanced after-school and summer school offerings, increased student support, and the scaling of instructional technology. Find sustainable funds for those with a high LOI and "strategically abandon" those with low LOI. As strong innovative practices get institutionalized (e.g., the science of reading; instructional technology), intentionally reduce the high initial costs of innovation and launch such as training and equipment purchases.
Go lean. Step back and take a hard look at ongoing – and often redundant – costs you've built into your budget as various assessment and information systems have been adopted. Just as cable and cellphone plans take up an increasing percentage of our household budgets, these annual costs often receive too little scrutiny in district budgeting. (Note: These redundancies create other 'costs.' For example, duplicative assessment and reporting practices take time away from student learning and burden staff.) These cost savings can fund some of the high-LOI activities originally funded through ESSER.
Rethink walls. No doubt the hardest and longest conversations will be about the size of your educator workforce. Nearly every district and school has unfilled teacher and paraprofessional positions. Even with grow-your-own approaches and increased state flexibility, it is unlikely that our current educator workforce is sustainable at the national, state, local and school levels. Right-sizing the workforce is likely to consume the remainder of most superintendents' careers and the loss of ESSER is an important trigger. Solutions will likely include adopting innovative instructional and staffing models that ensure that all students are taught by expert teachers, reducing course/program offerings in secondary grades, increasing class sizes and closing schools.
Listen. Design and routinely use stakeholder engagement activities—not just at the governance level conducting parent engagement, community and business partner meetings, and at the school level—that encourage family engagement to understand the LOI and the trade-offs of budget choices. Routinely report on these activities and how they are informing your strategy.
Landscape. Move beyond annual budgeting by using scenario planning to take a "what if" approach. Scenario planning smooths out short-term decision-making and helps stakeholders better understand the trade-offs. The capacity to project student enrollment by subgroup, teacher retention and recruitment by certification, capital needs and fiscal resources by source will be needed, but these will build a system-wide culture of data-driven decision-making.

In the wake of ESSER closeout, the need to improve efficiency will certainly be painful. This is a normal cycle of rebalancing similar to the one many of us experienced when the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expired. Resilient school systems are those that adapt, innovate and become agile enough to overcome challenges. We think though that this cycle is exacerbated by the acuteness of student learning loss and the growing threat of the teacher shortage. The latter is an opportunity to prepare for another season: hiring. In the coming months, we will spotlight how states and districts are thinking about recruitment and retention in compelling ways and getting results.

Instant Insights /

'Tis the season to reflect on better budgeting

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