Distributing Resources
Any conversation about budgeting begins with the distribution of resources. Equity plays a key role here, particularly regarding the variety of funding sources on which school districts rely, each with its own unique intentions and requirements. Ensuring that those resources are used accordingly is a delicate balance, and it’s one of the key roles that business and finance professionals play in the budget process. Those funds include general-purpose monies the community entrusts to the district and resources provided for specific student populations, such as special-education students, English-language learners, and the economically disadvantaged.
Distributing the resources for their intended uses is just the beginning. Business and finance professionals must also ensure that specialized funds are used appropriately—to support those students for whom the funds were intended.
Equity is also important in how districts use general-purpose dollars, which includes aligning funding with the key areas of need. This alignment moves beyond simply distributing general-fund dollars equally among all students. The best distribution of dollars is the one that meets the unique needs of a district and has been determined in collaboration with the district’s academic experts.
The process chosen to distribute these resources must be transparent. The process and the results—whether budgeting or strategic planning—must be communicated in such a way that internal and external stakeholders understand and can relate to them. External stakeholders need to understand why their children are (or are not) getting certain resources, for example. This level of understanding, a key tenet of procedural justice, helps build confidence and trust in more difficult processes, such as budgeting.
Likewise, internal stakeholders must understand the process in order to have confidence in how the decisions were made. Defining the process for those stakeholders gains the school business office strong support for implementing programs and strategies.
Ensuring that those resources are used accordingly is a delicate balance, and it’s one of the key roles that business and finance professionals play in the budget process.
Achieving the Best Outcomes
But distributing and using resources equitably might not be enough. How can districts ensure that those resources are supporting strategies that achieve the best possible outcomes? Here, business and finance professionals may need to step out of their traditional roles—and comfort zones—to reach across the aisle and collaborate with their colleagues on the academic side.
Using analyses—such as academic return on investment and other measurements of cost-effectiveness—can initiate better conversations about not only whether funds are allocated equitably and strategically, but also whether good outcomes are equitable across all student populations served, taking their unique needs into account.
Building the capacity to examine equity takes time and effort, and a good amount of supporting data. But the primary way to begin discussions about equitable distribution of resources and outcomes is by simply starting that conversation and gaining a shared understanding with academic colleagues about what equity means to the district and how collaboration serves the diverse needs of students and promotes good outcomes for them.
All Together
Equitable distribution of resources is at the heart of a good budget process and should be done in a highly transparent, well-communicated way that engages external and internal stakeholders. Collaboration between the business and finance staff members and academic peers, however, will ensure that all are moving toward a truly equitable budget process that focuses on guaranteeing that students receive the support they need for learning and that outcomes are equitable across all student populations, regardless of race, income, ability, or any other factor.