School Finance Course Reflection

I very much looked forward to this course because school finance is an area that I am very much interested in but know very little about at the district level. In that regard, I have learned a good deal about what goes on at the district level. I feel like I have a good understanding of the district audit process after talking to our assistant superintendent and I feel somewhat better about the various types of funding that exist and how those monies can be spent. However, after five weeks of this class, my honest self assessment still consists of my many “I”’s, which is very disappointing to me.

I didn’t expect that when I finished this course, I could jump right into a job at the district level and be the person who ran the school budget. I did hope that I could move more I’s to c’s and I don’t feel like that has happened. I feel a little better about the school board role in the audit process (I actually feel pretty good about the general outline of it but not all of the details into how the select an audit firm and what if any guidance they really give them, but again, the general outline is clear to me) but am still not exactly clear in their role in the school budget process after that. I think I will learn much more about this in the coming weeks as one of the district committee’s I’m on will be a part of this process, but that learning will come after this course if completed. I’m also somewhat disappointed that the information I have learned is more general than I had hoped. We got a brief outline of important events in the finance history of the state but didn’t spend much time talking about the court cases themselves. I feel like Chapter 41 and 42 schools were discussed and the legislative role in them was mentioned, but we never discussed that magical line in the sand where one type of district ends and the other begins. I know it’s a moving target and more schools are pulling on provisions in the law that allows them to keep their money, but again, this was a general overview of the process.

I know a 5 week course cannot answer all of these questions, so maybe my bar was too high, but overall, I wanted more out of this class than I got. Again, I may be getting what I ask for in the next two courses (and trust me, the work in week three was very laborious and took three people in our group several hours to complete), but I did feel like there was more I could have learned. Now the lectures were outstanding, and I very much enjoyed listening to Dr. Stephens and Dr. Arterbury share their experiences as superintendents and how finances were a huge part of their jobs. I was told this by our assistant superintendent as well and that this was especially true if you worked in a smaller school district with small central office staff. You’ll be lucky to get to talk about differentiated instruction and classroom related items because you have to spend all of your time making sure the lights are turned on and paychecks don’t bounce; this was a very sobering statement but one that seems very appropriate. These comments were all great, and at the end of this course, it was those personal antidotes that will carry the most weight moving forward.