Week 5, Part 3

This course has broadened my understanding of school finance, but it has also shown me how much I do not know. School finance encompasses such a wide arena of knowledge that it will take continued practice for me to truly feel like I understand.

Reflecting on the eight superintendent competencies was a valuable exercise that forced me to evaluate my learning and abilities throughout the course. I gained insight into my own knowledge, and I really had to reflect on my learning. There are still concepts for which I will need further study, but overall, I have grown in my understanding of and confidence with school finance. I will continue to study these concepts and work with my campus and district leadership to expand my learning.

The lecture, interviews and readings were extremely helpful for me. In this course, I read many documents and samples of district documents that I never knew existed. This prompted me to search out the documents for my own district. These are very informative snapshots of information that give a great picture of district demographics, budgets and spending. I also had never spent a great deal of time examining my district budget, rather, I had only focused on the budget pertinent to my department. Reading the district budget was very informative, and it showed me how frugal our district has been, and this has been an asset to us in the current financial crisis. The lectures were also great sources of information, especially as they related to explaining economies of scale and differentiated staffing. I will use these concepts, especially that of differentiated staffing as we begin to look at our campus staffing for next year. I will work with other campus administrators to determine if we can more effectively utilize our personnel.

I also learned a great deal from my interview with our Assistant Superintendent/ Business Manager. He very patiently spent over two hours with me, going over revenue forecasting and the steps to developing, approving, and implementing the district budget. Being required to carefully examine documents and apply what I learned also helped to cement my understanding of the concepts. I will continue to examine these documents to learn and understand more about budgeting.

I enjoyed working on the lessons with other colleagues. Although I was confused at first about how we were supposed to collaborate on the lessons, I began to enjoy getting to work with other colleagues and gain insights into what was happening in other districts besides my own. For this reason, I also enjoyed the discussion boards. I am always interested to read the insights of other students, and to learn the ways other districts develop and implement budgets and manage staffing. I can also use the concepts of virtual learning communities on wikispaces to have dialogues and collaborate with other administrators.

Overall, I learned a great deal in this course. In light of the current state budget crisis, the lessons and readings were appropriate and timely. Much of what I learned in this course will help me understand current legislative proceedings and their impact on local districts.