District leaders face increasing pressure to do more with less. The strategic budgeting approach seeks to tightly align the district’s resource allocation to the district’s long-term goals to make measurable improvements in student outcomes.
While strategic budgeting requires financial acumen, its success ultimately hinges on district leaders undergoing a fundamental shift in mindset and processes. With a strategic budgeting approach, leaders are encouraged to scrutinize every dollar spent in light of district priorities and student outcomes. This mindset shift necessitates new approaches to data analysis, ROI measurements, and frameworks for evidence-based decision-making.
Putting Strategic Budgeting into Action is Achievable
Budgeting strategically may be challenging, but it can be accomplished. Keeping these ten lessons in mind, you can evolve your current practices to leverage this powerful approach to allocating resources effectively and efficiently for maximum impact.
- Ground yourself in your strategy
- Change can’t happen without change
- Engage key stakeholders to build buy-in
- Keep the focus on students
- Emphasize cross-department collaboration
- Identify strategic budgeting champions
- Create short-term wins
- There are more options than Keep or Cut Far too often, districts are forced during budget season into the false choice of deciding whether to keep or cut initiatives. Analyses using A-ROI create a deeper, more insightful understanding of the efficacy and costs of programs and thereby lead to more nuanced options, such as modifying, expanding, or segmenting programs, which end up being the better choice for students.
- Budgeting strategically means multi-year planning
- Remember that strategic budgeting is a process
Your district’s strategy should be your north star. Keep your strategic priorities front and center, and be sure to articulate these priorities and discuss them to ensure that your stakeholders are aligned and focused. Don’t assume everyone is on the same page.
While nearly every public school district in the country has a strategic plan that is revisited and reworked regularly, new strategic plans are rarely accompanied by a significant shift in resource allocation or an update to budgeting processes. Declaring a new strategic plan is unlikely to deliver different results without a concomitant shift in how resources are allocated.
Allowing stakeholders to learn about the strategic budgeting process and see data being used to determine what works best, for which students, and at what cost helps elevate budgeting discussions and reduce defaulting to gut instinct or the loudest voice in the room.
Staff and stakeholders may feel skeptical and alienated at the mere mention of strategic budgeting and A-ROI, assuming it is all about the bottom line. Focus on how this effort will positively impact students by ensuring resources are directed to those programs that are proven to work best for students.
In many districts, the budget process promotes territorial behavior: departments feel they are battling each other for resources, and superintendents and budget officials are in the difficult position of being the arbiters. Having district leaders work as a team focused on district-level goals facilitates tradeoffs and helps achieve district objectives.
Some school and district leaders will take more naturally to this work than others, either because their skill sets are well-suited to it or because they believe in its potential. Recruiting these individuals to your implementation team will result in more effective implementation and will help to generate more supporters.
Embracing a new system is much easier when staff can see that it works—everyone likes to be on the winning team! Identifying a few programs that are strong targets for A-ROI analysis and demonstrating how nuanced options for taking action can yield better results for students will ensure that strategic budgeting remains a positive force within your district.
If current practices are not delivering the desired results, adding more staff, more paraprofessionals, and more hours of service is the path of least resistance. Still, this approach seldom yields significant improvement for students. Use data to track progress and inform improvements to deliver results for students.
Taking a strategic budgeting approach district-wide will take time. For this reason, DMGroup has developed a process for evolving to a strategic budgeting approach that helps districts build capacity, experience the power of A-ROI, and build momentum; then DMGroup has supports for expanding the effort and building greater capacity across the district.
Implement a Strategic Budgeting Process that Works
Implementing strategic budgeting requires commitment, collaboration, and a willingness to change. Following these ten lessons can change how your district allocates resources, leading to better outcomes for your students. If you’re ready to take the next step, contact us today to discuss how we can support you in this process.