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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to asbo international's school business insider. I'm your host, john brucato. Each week on School Business Insider, I sit down with school business officials and industry experts from around the world to share their stories and explore the topics that matter most to you. Find out what it means to be a school business official and get your insider pass on all things school business. Hello everyone, and welcome back to School Business Insider. One of the most important and sometimes overlooked relationships in school finance is the one between a school district and the local town or city government. Today, I'm joined by Adam Tarkini, chief of finance and operations for West Springfield Public Schools in Massachusetts, to talk about what makes the relationship work. We'll discuss the importance of transparency with municipal leaders, educating city or town councils on school finance realities, and why bringing local leaders into the process early can help avoid misunderstandings and conflict. We'll also explore why successful financial leadership requires letting data drive decisions rather than emotion, and how strong collaboration between schools and municipalities ultimately benefits the entire community. Adam, welcome to the podcast, my man. How you doing?
- [01:26]
B
I'm good, John, thank you. Thanks for having me. I've recently gotten into your podcast and I'm pretty excited to be a part of one.
- [01:34]
A
Oh, awesome. Well, thanks for tuning in and God bless you for muddling through having to listen to me every week. But I'm glad to have you on and I think you bring up a really interesting topic today and one, as I had mentioned, that is oftentimes overlooked. I recall back to the beginning of my career. I was so focused on what the school was doing, my blinders were on and I didn't really have an appreciation for the relationship that I should be fostering with our local municipalities, our towns and government. So I'm really excited to bring you on and really kind of unpack why that's so important. So with that, why don't we just start with the big picture? Why is the relationship so important between the school district and its local town or city government?
- [02:13]
B
Yeah, so similar to you, as I was starting off in this, I was kind of just tunnel visioned into the schools and didn't necessarily either know or understand how the school budget impacted the town or city budget. And then as, as I got through my career and gained a little more wisdom and some experience realizing that the school budget makes up most, if not a large percentage of a town's budget. So, so really understanding how our the way we do things may drive or have consequences on what the town does. So really bringing them into the convers conversation as early as possible so we can work as a team. I think we need to be partners throughout the whole year, but obviously definitely during the budget season. And if the community and other stakeholders can see that the town and the schools are working together, that instills some trust and confidence in the community, that the schools and the towns both together and separately are making the best decisions on behalf of the stakeholders. I think, you know, fostering that partnership with the town is, is probably the biggest part of building the budget on a yearly basis.
- [03:36]
A
And so what is the setup just in terms of how the, the, the, the structure is with the town and the school district? So I, I, I'm assuming that as you had mentioned, your, the school budget is a part of the town's budget. And so are you presenting to the town board your, your recommended budget? Because at least in New York, it's set up a little differently. We're much more bifurcated. So we school districts operate very independently of the town. We obviously are within the town, but we're, we're not beholden to their approval or not. So I'm guessing it's a little, it's the opposite for you. The town council or the town board is really, they're the overarching umbrella budget. You're, you're a subset of the overall town budget, is that correct?
- [04:17]
B
Yeah, actually similar to New York. So we have our school committee that operates, you know, kind of independently from the town council, but when the town ultimately votes for their budget, ours is portion of that. And one of the biggest, to me, one of the biggest educational pieces was that again, the town, the town approves our overall budget, they don't get a say in either what we can add to line items or what we can decrease and cut from line items. They just get to approve the number overall. While the school committee obviously is in the details of that and, and really educating some town council members on, on that role. Like, yes, we will obviously take your suggestions and we will have the dialog, but when it comes down to it, when the council is approving our budget as a whole of the towns, they really have no say in what we can spend our money on. And that's one of the, again, that's one of the biggest pieces of the relationship is educating them. And even though they don't get to dictate how we spend our money line item by line item, giving them as much information, so at least they're knowledgeable on how we're budgeting, how we're spending and why we're making some of those. Those decisions that we're making.
- [05:41]
A
So you make an interesting point that they don't have say over what you spend. Do they have say over what you levy and what kind of revenue you're looking for? So I'm thinking, like, local tax base. How does that work in Massachusetts?
- [05:53]
B
So that is totally separate. That is on. On the town side. And the town CFO is working with the taxes and what that levy amount, all of the revenue for the town side. In Massachusetts, we have a foundation budget. The revenue that we get from the state is called Chapter 70. And I like to tell, during my public hearing presentation to the public and school committee and the council that chapter 78 is the actual cash that we are getting from the state to operate the schools. Obviously, there is a gap between what we get in revenue and what our operating budget is. And that's where the town comes in, and that's where taxes come in. And other revenue that they generate helps offset the revenue from the state that we get in our operating budget.
- [06:47]
A
And so how does that work practically? Do you basically go to the town and say, listen, I need a few million dollars from the local taxpayer to balance our revenue budget, or does the town basically say, here's your number back into that?
- [06:59]
B
Yeah. So we were talking before we got on here. We've experienced over the last handful of years, this is my fourth budget cycle. But even, you know, predating me, we've had. We've experienced some pretty good budget years. You know, everyone kind of enjoyed or didn't enjoy the Esser years, The. The COVID money years. It was great when it was here and now we.
- [07:22]
A
Then all of a sudden, I was gone.
- [07:24]
B
And I was gone. Right. So, you know, we had. We had plenty of COVID money to help offset our. Our operating expenses. One thing about West Springfield, we were one of the highest resettling communities in the state of Massachusetts for refugees. And, you know, we have these wars going on and homeless population. So we saw a big increase in that population come into our town. And our foundation budget is driven by enrollment. So we saw two or three years of some pretty high enrollment spikes, which drove up our foundation budget, but along with our chapter 78, so we enjoyed a few good years. So take, for instance, this year, our operating budget for FY26 is about $58.7 million. The Chapter 70 revenue that we received from the state was about 47, $48 million. So there's that gap of about 10 or $12 million that the town has to make up. And so that's where their revenue generating process comes into play to help offset our operating budget.
- [08:36]
A
And so when you're building these budgets, and I'm thinking, particularly in maybe challenging budgeting years, is the town just kind of giving you carte blanche in terms of filling that gap, or are they like, listen, Adam, we can't raise taxes 6%, people are going to lose their minds. Like, what does that look like?
- [08:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And we're dealing with that right now. So for as long as I've been here the last few years, we've pretty much presented a level service budget, and the town has fulfilled that, which has been awesome. Our enrollment declined by about 170 students from last October 1st to this October 1st. And with a funding formula driven primarily on enrollment, we saw a huge decrease this year in our revenue. So this was the first year we're going through some large scale cuts right now. Our mayor has asked us to cut about $3 million from our budget. So right now our proposed FY27 budget is about $300,000 less than our FY26 operating budget. So we've been going through it, we've had some intense meetings, some long days trying to balance the budget. But this is one of those years where we can't fund, you know, as you guys have been funded over the last few years. And we also can't be raising taxes because everybody is feeling this financial crunch everywhere. So this is, this is one of those difficult years for us.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah, we're in the same boat at my district. We're, we're likely in a position where we're just bridging a one year gap with fund balance because there's really, there's nothing else to draw from. I, I looked under every couch cushion in the district and there's, there's no money left. So, you know, we're, we're having to reach into our pockets and kind of float that. But when, when you're looking at cuts like this, I mean, you said 107 decrease. I mean, unless all of those 107 kids were in one grade, you can't just cut staff unilaterally. So what, what has been kind of your approach to shore up that $3 million shortfall that the mayor's kind of pressing you guys on.
- [10:43]
B
Yeah, so. So most of those students, a large portion of those students, were those homeless population students that I had mentioned, and they were in elementary grade. So those, the K through 5 grades, are really affected by These potential reductions for this year, I'm assuming your budget is the same way. Ours is 80% salaries and staff and 75% of that 80% are teachers and unit A type staff. So when you get to a number that large, we try to keep those cuts as far away from the classroom as possible, obviously. But when we have such a significant, significant decline in enrollment and our teaching staff is such a large portion of the budget, we really don't have many other places to go to make those reductions. So that's been a struggle. We're relying on some retirements, natural attrition, maybe non renewing teachers that are non professional status in their first three years. So we're hoping with those moves, some of the potential reductions that we're proposing, those positions can slide into to those. And the, the net effect is not, I think we're, we're at about 34 FTEs right now. They're not all people, but we're hoping the net effect when all said and done is, is maybe half of that, 10 to 15 people are actually will be displaced from their job. And we've got a long way to go. We still got a few months through this process, so.
- [12:19]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it's challenging too, I just think from a messaging standpoint, especially to maybe some town council members who aren't intimately involved with the budget or just community members at large. Because when you're looking at your budget at 30,000ft and you basically say we have to cut 1 or 2%, it's like, well, what's the big deal? It's like, well, when 80% of that 1 or 2% are people and you're looking at class sizes potentially increasing as a result of that, then people get a little prickly and say, well, I don't want my, my kids experience to be in a class that's, you know, 20% larger because we have to, we have to cut. But it's like, well, you also don't want your taxes going up 10%. So it's. Threading that needle is really challenging.
- [12:58]
B
Yeah, it's a very fine line. And that's some of the pushback that we've obviously gotten not only from the community, but our own school committee members and town council members is hey, we need to keep these cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. We totally understand that. But we've also benefited from some low class sizes over the last few years. 15, 16, 17 kids in a classroom. And the way it's looking right now, now those won't really be Affected that much. They may go from maybe 15, 16 to 17 or 18, but that's still a pretty comfortable class size for teachers. So yeah, we're trying to keep those, those cuts away. You know, I tell people the staffing instructional part, that's, that's out of my lane and I will never try to try to get into. That's where I, you know, I let our superintendent and the assistant superintendents of curriculum, you know, look at the schedule. I, I will leave that to them. That is, that is their expertise. What I've been trying to do this budget cycle is just find some creative ways to fund things outside of the general fund. Unfortunately, it may work for this year, but we're just kicking that down the road for next year. So that's the other fine line. It's hard to kind of, kind of convey that message, portray that message like, hey, we're going to try to save some this year because we found some other ways to fund it. But next year we're going to be having this same conversation. So that's kind of the juggling that we've been doing over the last few weeks.
- [14:32]
A
Yeah, unless you make structural changes, those issues are just going to compound long term. And funny enough, that was a conversation I was having with my board last night because yeah, we can float it for a year, but we're going to be right back in the same situation next year because we're using one time revenues to offset recurring expenses. So. So it's a tough conversation to have. Fortunately for us, we've seen this coming a few years ago because we do a pretty robust long range plan, but doesn't make it any easier when that time comes where you have to make those tough decisions. So we talk a little bit about just kind of the challenges that we face in general. So with all that said, what do you feel are some of the biggest misunderstandings that municipal leaders may have about school finance?
- [15:15]
B
I think the one, at least in my experience in my previous district was a pretty small, it was a pretty small district, less than a thousand kids. We had two kids, two schools on one campus. But that also came with some small town politics. And that's really when I got into that position. I really saw the politics in action, the small town politics, politics in action. And the budget conversation was like maybe a month long conversation. It was, here's the money you have, you need to fit it in this box. There really wasn't any room for conversation. And that's when I was like, you know, this isn't sustainable. You know, I get, in a small town, revenues are scarce, but the conversation should be had all year round. But at least through the budget process from start to finish, it's a two or three month process, maybe a little longer. The conversation needs to happen, you know, along that time period. So coming to a larger town, it was the, it was the townside, I don't know if they didn't understand it, but wanting to have more say in our budget. And like I said, they have, they have a say on the total amount that they approve as part of the town's budget, but they don't get to dictate where we add things or where we cut things. So kind of.
- [16:37]
A
So when they, when you say they wanted more, say they wanted to actually get into the weeds and say, well we think you need more administratively here or more teaching staff here.
- [16:46]
B
Yes.
- [16:46]
A
Or that definitely blurs the line between governance and management. Right?
- [16:50]
B
Yeah, yep. But, but what I found out, so what I found out is because there was, I don't want to say lack of communication before me, but not as much communication as I'm providing now. They just, they weren't, they weren't educated. They just didn't know, they, some of them didn't know the mechanisms of our budget. So once we increased that dialogue and, and I want to say educated, but once I, once I gave them information that they were able to understand, it, it, it, it clicked, it clicked for everybody.
- [17:19]
A
How did you balance giving them more information but not too much information to overwhelm them? Because I think that that can be a slippery slope. It's, you walk into a district and oh we, they didn't, not much was shared with you. Here's everything. And then you may find yourself explaining minutia detail after board meeting after board meeting. So what, what was your approach to, I think you use the right term, educating. It definitely is that how did you educate? But strike that balance of not overwhelming.
- [17:47]
B
Yeah, that's a good point. I, I did, in my, in my efforts to give them as much information as possible, I, I, I kind of did overstep that, giving them too much information which led them to asking great questions, but questions they wouldn't have otherwise known if I hadn't kind of provided some of that information.
- [18:04]
A
Just a little self inflicted pain there.
- [18:06]
B
Yeah, I did it, I did it to myself. But to be honest, when I first got here, I was also lear, obviously not about the day to day stuff, but their personalities, what information they like. We have a finance person that works on the town, so he is in the data. I give them our thousand line budget for us to review before they vote on it. He is going through every line. And at first I was like, why are we doing this? There's so much more to this. But then I appreciated that he was going through it. I appreciated he was taking the time to go through it. So I knew how to tailor some stuff for that member. Other members just wanted some high level information. Why are we doing this? Why aren't we doing this? And as long as I was able or the superintendent was able to give them some data driven answers, they were happy with that. So the biggest thing was kind of learning each of our council members and what they wanted and then what information I could provide to everybody as a whole that, that, you know, educated them and got us all on the same page and that that took a couple of years to kind of get to that point.
- [19:18]
A
It's funny, it sounds like we've had somewhat of a parallel experience. I recall back to my, my district before I came to where I am now. The budget process was kind of just a formality almost. It was just kind of whatever, John, rubber stamp. As long as there's no problems, we'll just keep pushing forward. And then when I got here, our board members were, were, were and our CEOs, CFOs, attorneys really dialed into this kind of stuff. And my first few board meetings, I'm like, oh man, like they are getting into the weeds unlike anything that I was anticipating. But looking back on it, I'm glad that they did because I feel like it's made me a better professional and it's made me look at my work a little bit more with a granular lens where appropriate. And it was stressful to start because I was not used to that. And I think maybe I took my, my last district for granted. But I also am happy that it happened here because I feel like I'm much more in tune with individual line items and the movement of the budget where we are much smaller. So I needed that kind of more focused look. But man, it was eye opening when I got here and people were needling me on like the smallest little movements in the budget. I'm like, I am not used to this kind of conversation yet.
- [20:31]
B
It's a great point because I find myself now not just building the budget, but in most day to day stuff, we do something. I'm thinking to myself, okay, who's gonna, who's gonna notice? And what question might they ask? So if they ask this question, what's what can our answer be? How can I explain it to them so they, they understand what we're trying to do, but they also feel like they're involved in, in what we're doing. So. Yeah, I appreciate it at first. Again, like I said, I was like, why, why are we going through every line item? You know, they would, they would say, oh, this line item went up by 85%. But it was, it was like a $10,000 movement. I'm like, we're talking about a $60 million budget here.
- [21:08]
A
Why would look at the dol percentage, right?
- [21:11]
B
So, but it made me appreciate, like, thank you for looking at this. I, I, I love the dialogue. And now when we, when we do things, I, I try to keep those things in mind.
- [21:21]
A
And I, I think that it speaks to we, we don't talk a lot about it, I think, in, in the profession, but just the politics and the gamesmanship of just how these things work. Because when you get familiar with your boards and with your administrators, you know that board member A is the finance guy and board member B is the person who likes to talk about education. And board member number C is. Do we have enough recess? So as you start talking about the budget, you can almost anticipate what kind of questions are going to come your way. But I don't know how you feel about this, but I don't think there's any course or PD you can take necessarily that will prepare you for that. That's something you just have to live through. I mean, I have the scars to show it. I'm sure you do too, but you just, that's something you learn over time, and it almost becomes muscle memory after a while. Has that kind of been your experience?
- [22:06]
B
Yeah, I tell people all the time. It probably doesn't sound good, but I tell people all the time. Like, the spreadsheets are easy. Anybody can do.
- [22:14]
A
The numbers are the easy part. Right.
- [22:15]
B
The numbers are the easy part. Right. The state tells me I get this much. The town tells me I get this much. These are my expenses. We gotta make it fit. Anybody can sit down and put a formula into Excel and do that. I'm just big on relationships and the communication and making sure, whether it's with my staff, school committee, town council, just making sure everybody, you know, feels good is, is part of the process. So, yeah, I, the, the money and the spreadsheets are easiest part. It's developing those relationships and those dynamics. So when we come to a tough budget year like this, yeah, we're not going to agree on Some of the decisions that the school committee made, but you're going to understand why. And when we get to the point of approving the budget or public hearing where there's questions, we're all going to know, we're all going to be able to answer, this is why this decision was made or this is why this decision wasn't made. And that's been both. The biggest challenge, but like the biggest joy that I have is just trying to make sure everyone is on the same page. It's not always going to work. Obviously we're going to, to your point, we're going to leave some stuff out purposely, we're going to leave some stuff out accidentally. But most of the time, you know, my job is making sure we are all one big partner and we are, we are educated and able to answer all these questions, no matter who it is.
- [23:38]
A
And I wonder with when you think about kind of your day to day and with finance being in your title, I'm guessing that finance is really probably 20 of your capacity and 80% is everything else, whether it be the people, the, the transportation capital, just HR related stuff. Is that, is that fair to say?
- [23:58]
B
Yeah. So I, I have HR payroll accounts payable under me. I oversee transportation, although we're part of a collaborative with six other districts. So that collaborative provides us with our regular ed and special ed transportation, among other services. So they take care of a lot of the day to day stuff. My phone's always ringing, but I always say like, you know, my title should be like director of efficiency and communication because again, the finance part is the easy part. It's, it's like trying to get everybody, keep everybody on the same page and just effective in our jobs.
- [24:31]
A
Yeah. Like chief of putting out fires and solving other people's problems. Yeah.
- [24:35]
B
Yeah. And I haven't, I have an assistant chief of finance that is awesome. Could sit in my chair, do my job. Like right now, no one would ever even remember I was here. And she's really taken over the, you know, communication with the schools, the budget building with the schools. Because I'm in and out of meetings. Probably like, you know, I'm in and out of meetings. If I sit at my desk for a total of one to two hours a day, that's a lot. And it's never for a consistent one to two hours. It's 15 minutes, 30 minutes. You can't get anything done in that time.
- [25:07]
A
It's just enough time to get ready for the next meeting. It's not exactly.
- [25:11]
B
Yeah. So having somebody that can Kind of take care of all that has been a blessing to me. But also I've gotten hands off, which I find myself sometimes being like, no, let me take care of this. I got to retrain my brain on how to do this. So it's a big balancing act. It's a balancing act.
- [25:27]
A
Right. So one of your big points was just communication and collaboration, whether it be with town council staff or otherwise. But obviously with that comes transparency. What does transparency really look like in practice with you, the town council, and just kind of your daily operations?
- [25:46]
B
For the record, I can't stand that word transparency. Right. Because I feel like you can be as transparent as you want want, or you can be not as transparent as you want. Right. And I feel like people just throw that out there. It's like one of those words that sounds good.
- [25:58]
A
There's a sliding scale.
- [25:59]
B
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yep. So what I do, I'm not the only one. Obviously. I'm sure you as well do it. As I build a budget calendar, I'm already thinking about FY28. As sad as that sounds, we're not even through the FY27 building yet. I'm already thinking about FY28, so. So we're building a budget calendar. You know, in the summertime, early fall, we have school committee vote on it in our October meeting. It really just lays out some key dates throughout the process. And what I had started doing over the last few years was including meetings with the town council on there, getting on their subcommittee agenda, getting on their full council agenda. And the last couple years, I would either provide documentation to our school committee, either in meetings or via email, and then I would just take that information, send it to the council via email, and just say, hey, FYI, I shared this with the school committee last night. Please review. Let me know if you have any questions. And again, this is a second job for most of them. They're probably not checking their email a lot, so I never really got a lot of either feedback or questions from that. And then we got to the meetings that we needed to be there, and all those questions came up. They had them all written down and just hammer me with the questions. So what I did this year is every time I made a presentation to the school committee, I got on the next town council either budget subcommittee meeting and shared that information, or I got on their regular town council meeting and made the same presentation to them. Because I'm assuming the people that may watch our school committee meetings may be different than people that watch the town council meetings. And if they're the same, they got the information twice. But I wanted to make it a priority of mine that, that anything I was sharing with the school committee budget related, the town council was getting in the same form at around the same time and doing it in person kind of forced the dialogue. It forced them to ask me the questions on the spot and it forced us to talk about it then and there and not wait for an email or have to send a follow up email. Again, like I said, I'm a face to face on the phone type person. So email does not work for me. Especially during budget season. There's a lot of information that we need to go back and forth on. Email is just not a good driver of that conversation. So I changed that up.
- [28:30]
A
This year.
- [28:31]
B
It's been working awesome. The goal of it is really that when we get to those last couple meetings and it needs to go in front of the council to get voted on the questions have, have been.
- [28:42]
A
Yeah, they're already aware. It's, it's almost like new information, right?
- [28:45]
B
Exactly, exactly. So even in this tough budget year, it's, it's been working out great. Unfortunately, there's not many questions to have we gotta cut $3 million. We kind of know where it's coming from, but we've put the process in place and I think for future years we'll work great.
- [29:04]
A
So when you especially like a year like this year where you have that $3 million amount that you have to cut, you probably knew that was coming pretty early on. What in your experience is really the appropriate amount of time ahead of time that you should be communicating these financial realities to municipal leaders? You know, I wonder is, is there a point where it could be too early, where it's just kind of like a dog whistle and maybe things change and then it's not a problem? Or do you wait too late and all of a sudden it becomes urgent and people aren't thinking straight because there's, you know, press for time. So what, what is kind of your. What, what's the sweet spot for you?
- [29:40]
B
Yeah, again, in a year like this where we have to cut a significant amount, whether I was early with it, whether I was late with it, or whether it was I, I with delivering that message, people are going to freak out, right? There was, this year, there was no good time. But generally, I think the earlier the better. You know, we're doing projections. Enrollment's kind of hard to project on a year to year basis. And you know, because of our formula is driven by that enrollment and there's other, you know, sub parts of that. I can do projections. I did one this year. I was honestly a couple hundred thousand dollars off on, on the projection. So that's great. I was given that number to them. But I always said, like, this is, this is preliminary. Right. Like we're, we're a couple months out.
- [30:29]
A
We were not putting asterisks next to everything.
- [30:31]
B
Exactly. It was really to cover me. But also, but, but I, I think, you know, the earlier the better. In Massachusetts, the governor's budget is due on the fourth Wednesday of January. That's when she sends her budget out where the school funding is included. So from October, you know, some of November, you get through the vacation and holiday swing. It's not dead time, it's a lot of planning time, a lot of projection time. But we don't know anything until we get that governor's budget.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, it's more so conjecture and reading tea leaves like this is what we think's going to happen based on some of our conversations. But until the budget hits, it's anyone's guess, right?
- [31:12]
B
Anyone's guess. Yep, yep. So that. So, so again, for me, the earlier the better. At least let's start the dialogue. You know, what is, what is the school committee looking for this? What is the council looking for this year? What is the town looking to raise or not raise taxes this year? What is that health insurance cost this year? Because it doesn't matter where you are. That is going up exponentially year over year. So you can have those 30,000 foot conversations. But until we get our budget, there's really, there's really not much substance to that, to that process.
- [31:45]
A
So you mentioned that you worked at a smaller district and it was kind of, it is what it is approach, build a budget around these parameters. And we're not really going to talk about it. We'll see you next year. And now you're in a, in a district where it seems much more collaborative. You've already made great efforts in duplicating the information that you're presenting to your, your school counsel, to the town council. So you've obviously had some experience moving from a transactional relationship to collaborative. How do you do that? How do you go from a culture that is just very transactional and you don't have a lot of room to be creative and discuss some of the issues or celebrate some of the successes to something where everyone's hopefully on the same page or at least moving in the same direction.
- [32:29]
B
Yeah, I don't want to say it's it's forcing the issue, but it's being pretty persistent. And you know, I say this a lot like I've learned a lot of things. I've learned a lot of what not to do in previous jobs and brought that to the chair that I'm in now. Right. Like I've learned those experience. Like in the, in the previous town I was in, there was no matter how many times I reached out to a town official, whether email or phone, I wasn't getting a response any, you know, the person wasn't huge on in person walking in the door and having conversations. So I found out rather quickly, although I still tried that that type of dialogue or communication or partnership just wasn't, it wasn't gonna work. I got here, you know, there was obviously some of that already going on, but I wanted to enhance it. I wanted to make it better. And it was just persistence. It was just again reaching out to school committee members when I first got here, set up one to one meetings, introduce myself. What are your goals? What are my goals? What are the district's goals? And just kind of starting that relationship and making it feel more personable than, than transactional and, and call me whenever you want, text me whenever you want. Like I'm, I'm gonna answer like and I think again, making people feel that they're being heard and if they have a question, they reach out. I'm, I'm going to, I'm gonna get them an answer or try. Was was part of the, was part of my effort and, and to now it has paid off. That's not gonna work that way all the time. As, you know, board members, they're going to change every few years. You can't get too comfortable with boards because they could change. So it's worked until now. It may not always work, but while it's working, I'm going to lean on that because I think it's been a huge asset to the town and the school department in having such a great collaborative partnership.
- [34:34]
A
I'm also curious on just your approach to building trust with these individuals. And in my experience, I think being or having a trusting relationship with your school community, town council, your administrators is great for many reasons, but it's especially useful to draw on that capital when you're in a tough budget season. I think back to we were talking offline. We've had some really smooth budget years the past five years and this year is exceptionally challenging. And I think back to if this was my first budget year walking in the district, my hairline would have receded way quicker than it already has. But because I've had an opportunity to build the trust with our board. I don't know how you feel about this, but I feel like I can deliver bad news more confidently because I know it's not going to be a five alarm fire because we're all on the same page. We know we want to get to X and to get to a point where it is sustainable and. But it's going to take a little extra work this year. What is your kind of approach in philosophy on just building those trusting relationships and how it may pay dividends down the road?
- [35:41]
B
I think it's all about the communication factor and it's all about starting that communication as early as possible. But not only during the budget season, right? Not only that two or three month stretch, but year round, providing them updates, reaching out to them, asking for their input or asking them questions. I think just keeping them in the loop and letting them know that they're part of the process and not outside of the process. And I'm not giving you this information just because I have to. I'm giving you this information because I want to educate you, I want you to know what we're going through and I want you to be able to answer the same questions that we're going to get. So I think, and it's corny, right, and it's cliche, but it's really, you know, making everyone feel like they are part of the team. And no matter where you are, town council, school committee, a central office employee, a teacher, if you get this question, you know how to answer it because you've been given that information. I just think I am huge on communication. I just think the consistent and clear communication is the biggest key to a good budget year and to a bad budget year. Like I said earlier, we may not agree, we're not going to like the, the cuts that we have to make. And school committee and town council may not agree on where those cuts come from, but we can at least all agree on the process that it took for us to go through that and identify these cuts. And we're all on the same page there. So the, the, the consistency and the, and the, the clarity of the communication is the, the biggest piece of this whole process.
- [37:25]
A
And when, when you're communicating these, these, these different facets of the budget, I'm assuming, you know, it's, it's a very data driven conversation. However, we're, we're operating in a, in a space where people is our biggest Commodity and it can be very emotional, especially when you're dealing with families and you're dealing with their, their kids. And there could be impacts in the classroom based on financial decisions that are made. How, how do you balance a data driven conversation while being empathetic to the emotional component that sometimes derails the conversation?
- [37:59]
B
Yeah, I tell my staff in the office all the time, I'm like, take the emotion out of the decision that we're gonna make. Like you can feel it, right? Feel the emotion, express the emotion. Once that's done, let's take a step back and say, okay, what really needs to be done? What's that? We don't think of this or I didn't really until recently in my career. The return on investment, right, you think that's kind of like a private business term, but there is return on investment in our job. So take the emotion out of it. What is the return on investment in a decision that we're going to make or the potential risks in the decision that we are potentially going to make? But yeah, when we present our budget with $3 million in reductions and 34.5 FTE reductions, we're going to have community members and parents come to the podium and say, this is going to affect my stud. This is going to affect class sizes. This may affect special education services. And that's real emotion. Like they are really affected by that. So we can share in that. But then to your point, where is the data that says, hey, class sizes aren't going to change or services aren't going to be disrupted? And this is why. So I think in some instances you can kind of have some emotion, also the data. But, but we try to remove that emotion. We're certainly empathetic and sympathetic, but at the end of it, we need to have that data and say, this is the data that we use, but show it. Be clear and be transparent in this is how we got to this. We agree we don't like it either, you're not gonna like it, but unfortunately, with the circumstances that we're under, this is what needs to take place. So I think the empathy and the sympathy plays a huge part in it. But just backing up that data with, you know, some reasoning and talking to them, don't just give them the data, maybe explain it a little bit and educating them on what the data tells us and then how it, how it helped us make a decision.
- [40:05]
A
Okay, so as we wind down here, what piece of advice would you give a school business official who's really trying to strengthen Their relationship with local municipal
- [40:14]
B
leaders, just meet with them. Like I said earlier when I got into this job, something I didn't do in my previous job was I set up times with our school committee members. I set up times with our town council members. Get, get the face to face. I think it's so easy in this day to kind of just sit in your chair and go back and forth in email or Google chat or sharing documents. Get up from your desk, go talk to people face to face, have the dialogue with them and just make them feel that they're, you know, that their opinions, you know, you value them. But it's hard to get that. You know, it happens all the time in my office. They'll come into my office and say, read this email. Doesn't it sound like this? And I'm like, you can't really tell emotion through an email. Like, how about you pick up the phone, right? Like, I am a huge proponent on the face to face or phone call. Because then you can, you can really see how people are feeling.
- [41:14]
A
It can gauge the situation much better than just text.
- [41:17]
B
And then you're just firing off emails and it's like, okay, now we're four or five emails in and we've gotten nowhere on a decision and everyone's pissed off. So yeah, I would say is build those relationships, but do it face to face. Do it one on one. Subcommittee meetings, general meetings, but, but build those, build those relationships. I think it'll make a lot of your job easier.
- [41:43]
A
Great. Well, Adam, thanks for joining me today on School Business Insider. This is a great conversation and I wish you the best of luck in the balance of your budget development.
- [41:52]
B
Thank you, John, again, I appreciate it. I'm excited to be on and you as well. Good luck the rest of the budget season.
- [41:57]
A
Thanks, my friend. Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on school business.