An important part of the budgeting process for school officials is generating public approval. Officials at WW-P hope they can engage the community to share their own ideas for coming up with a spending measure during the rough economy.
Superintendent Victoria Kniewel made a presentation during the board’s January 25 meeting to describe the process by which the board was engaging the community and the process by which it will evaluate input.
“With challenges come opportunities,” Kniewel said. “Since the recession and the loss of state aid, we have been restructuring for more efficiencies.” And part of that process involves engaging stakeholders year round, she said.
School administrative officials have already been holding monthly meetings with principals and other stakeholders, including board members, central office staff, teachers, association leadership, PTA and PTSA officers, senior citizens, students, and the Superintendent’s Advisory Council.
Officials also hope to gain more input from the community forum, which was supposed to be held on January 27, but was canceled because of inclement weather. Officials will reschedule the forum for a later date. During the forum, residents will meet in groups to provide input on priorities for school officials to consider when making decisions about the budget.
Officials have also begun a shared training program with other districts, including Princeton, Montgomery, and Scotch Plains that will examine process and performance management strategies, Kniewel said.
The process, she said, entails taking ideas from stakeholder forums and providing feedback on their ideas, including reasons, decisions, timelines, and other factors to consider.
“The attention is on the process,” said Kniewel. “What we heard numerous times was, `I told you that idea; you should have used my idea.’” So, officials created a system that would allow school officials to be transparent about which ideas can be implemented and which cannot — which leads to greater transparency, she said.
Ideas are evaluated based on the ease of implementation and the impact on the budget. The ideas are put into four categories: high ease/low impact; high ease/high impact; low ease/low impact; and low ease/high impact. Kniewel said the district would like to get as many ideas as possible that would fall into the high ease/high impact area, although not many do fall there.
“We take revenue generating ideas and ideas to reduce spending and break them down into categories,” Kniewel explained.
Part of the criteria used to evaluate ideas includes the impact on students, alignment with core values; dollar impact and savings; time involvement and effort; legal concerns; the level of risk; impact on other processes; and the likelihood of success, Kniewel explained.
“There are some ideas that come forward that aren’t always legal for a school district,” she said about some ideas presented.
