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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. Today marks our last episode of 2025, and I have to say it was a really incredible year, and a year I'm proud of as your host, but more so of just our incredible guests that we've had throughout the course of 2025. We hit some really cool milestones, and I want to just kind of reflect on what we've been able to accomplish, maybe review some stats and just look back at 12 months and maybe look ahead for the next 12 and see what we can do in 2026. But I'd like to start out to say that in 2025, we hit our 100th episode. That was the state of healthcare more recently, and that was met with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of good feedback, and I think was a good way to kind of close out 2025, mainly because we have some pretty challenging budget times ahead of us. I think everybody can relate to that. I know at least here in New York, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty with how state funding is really going to shake out, and I know there's a lot of uncertainty in the federal realm as well. So because we're our people industry and, you know, majority of our budgets are salary and benefits, I think closing out on some tips and tricks and really some foresight on what's to come with, with health insurance was was a good way to mark our 100th episode. So I want to thank Eric Gilbert and Adam Henson from Daybright Financial. Those two joined me on the episode. We actually had a lot of fun. It was later in the afternoon, so we were a little punchy, but I think it was. It was met pretty well by. By all of you listening. We had some really good feedback and a lot of engagement, so that was great. So I want to talk a little bit about the numbers. I mean, we're numbers people. Review the stats. I did this last year in our inaugural year of School Business Insider, so it's exciting to explore just the growth that we've had on the podcast and what we've been able to accomplish. When I look back at our stats for 2025, we had over 16,000 downloads, meaning that, you know, we, we host our podcast on a particular platform and those are individual downloads across the entirety of the year. And it wasn't just, but it's, it's great to know that we have listenership from, from all over the world. So, you know, our top countries in terms of listenership. I think obviously the United States is number one. Most of our listener base is located in the, in the US and that definitely shows in the stats that. But second to that is the United Kingdom. So we have a lot of UK listeners from across the pond, which is great. And we've had some really great guests from, from the uk. You know, Steve Morales with ISBL has been on the podcast a few times talking about operational excellence. So he's, he's always a fan favorite and his, his episodes are met with, with a lot of enthusiasm as well. But what was surprising to me, the next biggest country of listenership is Bangladesh, followed by Germany and Somalia. So very interesting to me, ones that weren't really on my bingo card in terms of our listenership, but encouraging to know that we are reaching listeners in countries that maybe don't fit the traditional model of US education, but there must be something that is resonating with them. Shout out to you in Bangladesh, Germany and Somalia if you're listening to this. Thank you for tuning in so often and so frequently to School Business Insider. I'm glad to hear that we have that kind of listenership. But in terms of where our listeners are located in the US being our biggest listenership country wise, the top states and regions we have are Virginia, Washington, D.C. illinois and New York. So shout out to my ASBO International folks. I'm sure you make up a lot of the Virginia and Washington D.C. area listenership, so, so that's awesome. But we've also had a lot of guests and a lot of participation from Illinois and New York. Obviously I have a little bit of a bias, I will admit to New York because that's where I'm located, that's where my school district is. And I try to spread our guests out across the country and across the world as much as possible. I don't think New York was the biggest in terms of guests. I think actually it was Illinois this year. But encouraging that, you know, personally I have some support in New York. So thank you all my New York friends. And Illinois, I mean, it's a very active state, very active asbo. And I think that's reflected in terms of the participation in listenership in school Business Insider so thank you to all of those states and everybody else who's been able to tune in. And then I guess, you know, how were people listening to this? I push this out on LinkedIn every single week on on the Apple podcasts. So there's no surprise that is the largest source of listenership, which I don't know if that's a self fulfilling prophecy because that's how I push it out or people are actually using Apple podcasts. But after that is Castbox, which admittedly I've never heard of, and then Pocket Casts. The only reason I know about Pocket Casts is from our good friend and longtime listener and participant Brian Cheknicki is a Pocket Cast listener. So maybe it's just him racking up all of those, all of those stats. But great to see that we have a pretty good cross section of listenership both in terms of geolocation and platform. So it's great that we're able to kind of reach everybody in, you know, who's who's willing to tune in. And I think we've had some really great episodes. When I think back when I look at the stats in terms of popular episode for 2025 was Navigating GASB 101 Compensated Absences Simplified. And if I remember correctly, I think that was the case or a similar episode in 2024 was that as well. But I think that really speaks to the technical episodes are well received. So I really enjoy doing different kinds of episodes, whether it's kind of those feel good storytelling or just really getting into the nitty gritty of the technical. And I think, you know, there is an audience for both of those. And navigating Gasby 101 was was the most popular in in 2025 and that was January 7th of 2025. So right at the top of the year, you know, we try to time these episodes so they make sense in terms of the budget cycle and the audit cycles for school districts. And I think being able to bring in some auditors to speak to GASB101 to kind of give a preview of what is to come for school districts was the right move. And I think that's something we'll try to do in the future as more of these GASB's come out or more regulations or more rules for school districts come out that affect us on broad strokes at school. Business Insider we're going to do our best to kind of anticipate those needs and anticipate those requirements and get some episodes out there early enough so you have some time to listen to it, digest and then reflect on what can we get done and what can we do to prepare for these things coming down the road. So we don't try to issue episodes right as you're needing to do an audit or right as you're in the middle of GASB 101, for instance. We try to get ahead of it so you have some time to kind of process and prepare for those Today's episode is brought to you by Daybright Financial, one of the nation's largest independent privately held firms for benefits and retirement planning. Serving nearly half of US Schools as a proud strategic partner of ASBO International and the chosen third party administrator for Asbo's 403 model plan, Daybright takes the stress out of managing benefits and retirement plans. From 403 and 457B plan administration and employee benefits to compliance, recordkeeping, customer service and enrollment. They handle it all so school leaders can focus on what matters most. Supporting students and staff with Daybright. It's just that simple. Learn more@daybright.com the next biggest episode was making data strategies for financial and academic integration. And those that episode was with two good friends of mine, Tim Hilker and Joe Greco, though they have presented at ASBO International, geez, the past five plus years on academic return on investment. So we basically were able to kind of dive into their presentation and their work at the district in which they they both worked at in New York and really kind of pull the veil back in terms of what, what a ROI is for them and what it could be for for others in the, in the industry. So that was obviously met with a lot of enthusiasm and you know, a lot of listenership because I think as we move towards the future and we are met with limited resources, our communities, our boards are expecting us to do more with less and being able to take a very pragmatic and systemized approach in terms of what you're doing in your district and measuring that return on investment is becoming more and more important as we are looking to do more with less. And then the third most popular episode was Hard Choices, Smarter Schools Surviving the Big Shrink, if you remember that episode with Dr. Marguerite Rose of Georgetown University Edenomics Lab. And that episode was all about what she classifies as the big shrink or a long term nationwide enrollment decline. And what are districts having to do to prepare for that? Who's being affected first and what are kind of ramifications to school districts with seeing such a big decline in enrollment and you know, Certainly at my district, we've had some declining enrollment over the past few years. We've leveled off more recently, but I'm seeing that as a nationwide trend where there are just less and less students in schools, and communities are getting to the point where they may not have the capacity to sustain the same or greater budget with less students. And obviously, we know as school business officials, the cost of doing business increases. The way we educate children has changed and is more costly per student. But your average community member may not be totally in tune with that or aware of that. So I think Dr. Rosa did a wonderful job explaining what is happening in real time and what districts can do to get ahead of the big shrink, because it sounds like inevitably that's coming. So anything that we can do as school business officials and as school leaders to anticipate this change and get ahead of it rather than being reactionary, I think is going to be in the best interest of all districts and all communities. So a big shout out to Dr. Rosa for coming on and really explaining that and kind of going through the potential issues coming down the line, other big episodes, and they kind of filter out and I won't get into individual ones, but the big theme for 2025, no surprise, I think, has been artificial intelligence. Huge shout out to Aziz Agaev, good friend of mine, and has been on the podcast a few times in 2025, was able to help us really understand practical implications of AI and allow us to kind of explore some opportunities and, you know, maybe get out of our own way and reveal some blind spots with AI. But I think Aziz and other guests were able to speak to AI in how business officials and schools can really use it effectively. And it just seems to be an ever increasing theme. I think 2026 will be no different in terms of the increased chatter around AI. As, you know, LLMs like ChatGPT and Copilot and Gemini get more and more sophisticated. I think we as school business officials are going to have to do the same in terms of how can we effectively leverage AI in our everyday use. I know certainly personally I use it on a regular basis, whether it's with the podcast, whether it's with my, my, my day job. As a school business official, I'm using AI on a regular basis and I feel like I'm getting more proficient at using it, how to prompt and really taking the, the busy work and the load off of me and allowing, you know, artificial intelligence to do a bulk of the, the heavy lifting that would otherwise take me a long time and, you know, if it's repetitive in nature, I'm trying to offload that to. To AI, so that has proven to be beneficial personally for me. But I think just based on the engagement on School Business Insider and the interest in AI, we'll definitely look to include more of that in 2026, maybe do some deeper dives in terms of how to use AI and maybe some pitfalls and things to really look out for as these systems become more and more sophisticated. Some of my favorite episodes this year, we're less of the technical and more of the storytelling. One of my favorites was Back in June, May, Timeframe. We had Peter Bard on, and we talked about Breaking the Silence, addressing mental health among school business officials. Again, a huge thank you to Peter in being so vulnerable and open about his personal experience with mental health. And he went through some pretty challenging times, but was open and honest about what his experience was. And I think that was really telling for school business officials because we can oftentimes feel like we're on an island alone. And for Peter to be so open, honest, and vulnerable to our listenership, I can't thank him enough. And, you know, that was a really in depth, challenging conversation, but I'm glad we did that. And, you know, that was one of my favorite episodes. And I think a lot of people would agree with me that being able to tell your personal story like that is. Is not easy. But I think a lot of us can see ourselves in that story and probably have. Have felt those. Have felt that way before in the past. So thank you, Peter, for that. That was a great episode. Another one of my favorites was Speak Like a Human, Prompt Like a Pro with my buddy Aziz. Always fascinating to speak to him. He knows so, so much about AI, but not just AI, more so how to leverage it and use it effectively like I was just talking about in the business office. So he's always a wealth of information, and I appreciate him jumping on and always being willing to speak to how we can. We, as school business officials can make our lives a little bit easier. So those were. That was one of my favorite episodes as well. And then I have to say my bias. I always. I always love bringing Brian Check Nicki on. He's a, you know, he's. He's. I'm on the board of ASBO in New York. He's our executive director. But he's become a good friend of mine. So it's just nice to jump on with a friend and shoot the breeze. And, you know, he's leveraged AI he uses on a regular basis. But you know, he's also doing a lot of good things for the members of ASBO ny. Leveraging AI, but building tools to make the lives of school business officials a lot easier in terms of communicating complex data and complex concepts that come out of the state of New York and able to kind of parlay that out to our communities and to our boards, taking really challenging data sets and making them easily digestible. So shout out to Brian for, for coming on and being able to demo his tools and talk about not only just how he's leveraging AI, but what he's doing as an executive director to really just shed some more light on how data works in the state of New York. And some other final feedback that I've gotten from episodes is the solo episodes I've been doing where I've just been kind of reflecting on either my own personal journey, talking about, really talking about subjects that I feel comfortable talking about solo. I've gotten some good feedback on those. So I'll probably look to do a few more maybe once a quarter in 2026. Obviously, I think our episodes where we have guests are much more engaging and much more interesting to listen to, but I think, you know, an episode like today where I'm able to just kind of brain dump and get some thoughts out is nice, maybe selfishly for me, but it sounds like, you know, a lot of people are getting something out of it. So yeah, I'll look to do maybe some solo episodes. Like I said, maybe, maybe once a quarter. But at any rate, I'm really excited about 2026. We're going to do our best here at School Business Insider to get you the best content available in the profession and get some new guests on, maybe have some recurring guests come back, do some follow up on some previous episodes. You know, operational excellence has been a recurring theme on School Business Insider, so I'm likely going to have Steve back on, Stephen back on to talk about that and everything developing. And you know, we have some cool partnerships coming up as well. So, you know, I just want to thank all of you for tuning in and for listening week after week. This is absolutely a labor of love and this is so much fun to do this and is incredibly rewarding to see that we have such a high level of engagement. So I'm taking that as hopefully we're doing something right. But please, if you have any suggestions for topics or guests, you can go to asbointl.org SBI and there you'll be able to submit your suggestions for guests and for topics. And it doesn't even have to be you. You can suggest other people, I'll reach out to them. But really don't. If you have a story to tell or you you feel like you want to talk about an individual topic or subject, please. I know getting in front of a microphone and talking is on a podcast can be a little bit intimidating, but rest assured, you know, we try to make this as easy as a process as possible. So if you're intrigued by that, please reach out to me, Paul podcastbotintl.org and let me know that you're interested in coming on. I would love to have you. And I think, I think the more stories we tell, I think it's just validating to a lot of school business officials to hear that we're not in this alone. So thank you all again for an amazing 2025. I hope you have some time with your friends and your family over the holiday and New Year's, and we'll see you next week in 2026. Thank you for tuning in to School Business Insider. Make sure to check back each week for your favorite topics on school business.