Future Focused School Budgeting

By Derald Glover, Assistant OASA Executive Director

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” —— Ben Franklin

Oklahoma school financial officers have always faced challenges of the unknown when it comes to available revenue. That unknown has always centered around the state aid allocation and the potential for cuts. While that challenge is still there, schools now have a new and different challenge. It is the challenge of budgeting a series of three federal stimulus packages over the next four years knowing that after September 2024 all of that money is gone. That is a refreshing challenge that schools haven’t dealt with since the AARA stimulus in 2010.

So, what should you consider in budgeting these new funds? The first thing to do is use the funds to stabilize your budget. Many schools have lost students and are now getting them back, causing instability in funding. For another year, we still have the two-year look back to help give schools time to adjust. Once the budget is stable, you if you should identify and prioritize the most impactful improvements that can be put in place to optimize your services for students. How can you transform your educational opportunities in the next four years?

CCOSA's federal program consortium is identifying many of the strategies, services, and programs that schools may consider.

As you identify these student impact budget items you have to project your budget out through fiscal year 2025. The federal funds are one-time dollars and if you don't plan you can find yourself in a budgeting bind once those dollars expire. The CCOSA Budget Short Form is a long range projection tool that takes your FY2020 budget, plugs in anticipated increases and decreases in both revenue and expenditures, and projects your fund balance over the life of the federal ESSER funds. It allows you to see the impact if you supplant the ESSER funds, if you spend it all on one-time needs, or if you do a blend of the two. Most importantly, it allows you to have an intentional plan to spend the money to maximize student services.

CCOSA developed the Professional School Budget Framework so schools could plan and prepare a usable professional budget filled with information and data supporting the budget. The CCOSA Budget Short Form does not replace the professional budget. It is a tool to project the impacts of future changes on the budget which in turn will assist the budgeter in being more accurate and more confident in the school’s ability to fund the school improvement priorities that have been identified.

For more information about either the CCOSA Budget Short Form or the CCOSA Professional Budget Framework contact Dr. Pam Deering deering@ccosa.org or Derald Glover glover@ccosa.org.