Dear Friends and Colleagues, 

The public school budget is approved as one line. In ATM 2025, the Town Meeting members will appropriate a $146 million public school budget as a single number. The school finance department does an amazing job of making sure each dollar is accounted for as it is spent (Thank you Mr. Coelho, assistant superintendent of finance and his team). All manner of legal and quantitative checks are observed and met. They also wrestle daily with MUNIS, the financial software platform. 

Meanwhile the School Committee looks at:

  1. Wood: the warrant articles presented every two weeks which require approval for current expenses. Lots of detail, fascinating.
  1. Trees: the quarterly reports which show accumulated expenses in each spending bucket as the year progresses. It’s our early warning system! Which departments are overspending or severely underspending? The report for the fourth quarter, which is also the end of the financial year, is especially important. It helps us understand trends and predict needs for the next budget cycle. It is an important accountability measure, as it ensures that the funding guidelines were adhered to during the past academic year.
  1. Forest: the annual budget which is arrived at through the school and town budget process, including a historical look back at expense and funding trends, and a predictive look forward at possible new expenses and revenues. 

The budget book is all about one specific year. However, schools exist in a continuum. Fiscal decisions made in one year have an impact year after year. Think about past investments in student well-being, curriculum and professional training as the roots which stabilize new growth next year. Similarly, overspending can be akin to overwatering or overfertilizing, leading to nonresilient, unhealthy growth. 

These three sets of documents and their underlying substantive work, periodically managed/monitored/reported, lead to a healthy, balanced ecosystem with abundant accountability. Doing this year after year leads to an environment where the most important inhabitants—the children—thrive. 

Best,

Deepika Sawhney

(School Committee Member 2018-2025, Precinct 6 Town Meeting Member)

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