The recent news coverage on Claremont’s financial struggles spotlights the often-underappreciated role of the school business manager. At the same time, it downplays the complications business managers and school boards face in managing their budgets. These complications are often beyond their control and can result in accumulated deficits if they are not addressed quickly.
As a retired superintendent with 29 years of experience in five districts in five different states, I can attest to the wide range of responsibilities a business manager assumes. For example, a leader who served as assistant superintendent for business during my seven years as superintendent in SAU 70 — which includes Hanover and Norwich — worked with me, the administrators, and boards in four districts to prepare and oversee their budgets.
He oversaw the non-instructional functions of the schools, including food service, maintenance, transportation, and contracted services in all the districts. He assisted the boards’ negotiation teams. He led the team overseeing three major projects in Dresden: the renovation of Hanover High, the building of Richmond Middle School, and construction of the athletic fields. He also took on a long and varied list of “other responsibilities as assigned,” which included the exchange of phone calls with me and the town’s road crews at 5:30 a.m. on snowy days to decide whether to hold school.
None of the tasks typically managed by the business administrator are straightforward. Take the budget, the annual spending plan for the district. Its preparation requires assumptions based on unpredictable revenue streams that will presumably cover all the costs the district incurs, including those created by unpredictable events.
The spending side of a school district budget requires knowledge of the state and federal laws and regulations governing general and special education, the operation of bus fleets, the operation of school cafeterias, and the provision of a safe work environment for employees. In developing the spending plan, the business manager needs to take several variables into account, variables that are beyond his or her control: health insurance costs; the cost of fuel oil and gasoline; the cost of food; leaky roofs, or pipes; and last, but not least, unforeseen and often unforeseeable special education costs associated with the placement in a costly residential facility or the need to hire an instructional assistant. Should any of these costs exceed the revenue in the budget forecast, a budget cut is needed and (in most cases) the business manager is often the individual who recommends where the budget should be cut.
Developing the revenue side of the budget requires the monitoring of ongoing deliberations on the state budget. This is especially true in the case of a New Hampshire district like Claremont which relies on state funding or any Vermont district where the formula for state funding shifts over the course of the budget development process.
Special education requires special attention when forecasting revenue. When the state legislature determines its level of special education aid or alters the timing of their aid to reimburse the district for special education costs, the district budget needs to change and in almost every case the change is downward. This uncertainty in state funding often results in less revenue than the district expects and creates a hole for future budgets since it increases the spending baseline without having a corresponding increase on the revenue side of the ledger. This kind of death spiral can only be stopped with budget cuts or local property tax increases — a distasteful choice.
Finding someone with the broad set of fiscal management and analytic skills is a big challenge and one that is particularly daunting since business managers must also possess exceptional “soft skills.” They need to be able to cultivate and maintain a good working relationship with administrative staff members, the board, and angry taxpayers. Most importantly to a superintendent and the school board, the business manager needs to have their full trust as well as the trust of the public in general.
I have been through a circumstance like those facing the Claremont School Board, having accepted an appointment in a district where a business official had resigned under pressure. Based on that experience, which did result in passed bond issues and budgets in four out of five years, my advice to the board is to look forward. Your predecessors on the board and the predecessors of your administrative staff did the best they could with the information they had. Close the book on what happened and take the steps needed to ensure the public and the school district staff it will never happen again.
I would begin by carefully reading the forthcoming audit report and ask the auditors to provide recommendations on how they can get you the information you need from the staff to make sound fiscal decisions. The new administrators in Claremont and the public who vote on the budget need to trust you and be confident that you have their backs. That is more important than determining what happened and why.
Wayne Gersen is a retired public school administrator. He lives in Etna.