School Finance 101 Meeting Was Really Informative

Doreen Treuden, District Business Manager, held a "School Finance 101" primer on this cold sunny January Saturday morning. She held forth for four hours, nearly non-stop, regarding the ins and outs of school finance. The first two and a half hours was spent on describing terminology, giving examples of each term and how changes in one part of the finance picture effected other parts of the picture. The balance of the time was spent describing the Baird Budget Forecast model used to project next years budget, which pegs the deficit at 1.6 million dollars. Again, using Evansville specific values to go through a baseline, assumptions set one and assumptions set two models was probably the single most valuable board training tool I've seem in the 6 years I've been paying attention.

Most exciting, Doreen will make the finance tools available on the school district website so the general public can look at them too. Now, I'll be the first to admit that numbers simply activate some visceral part of me that goes immediately into analytical mode. My eyes didn't glaze over once and more importantly, even the coffeecake provided by the frugal finance 'ficianado from her own kitchen didn't cause the usual sweet induced coma. Huzzah, Doreen. Thank you so much for this data. Click on the post to see where the new Business Department info page is to peruse at your leisure!