As a former major urban district COO who was responsible for levy campaigns, I am seeing a major disconnect between school leaders and tax payers. When placed in charge of a levy, the first thing I wanted to know was how did tax payers think we were using thier money? The answer – 10% or less thought were using it wisely. We launched a multi year, district wide strategy to cut costs and improve effiiciency. Part of the strategy involved keeping the public informed about how we improved and reduced costs – not how we cut costs and reduced services. Anyone can cut costs and services – but tapayers take notice when efficiency based improvements are made. As we can see from the result of levy campaigns – we are in a new era – that requires new strategies. The old methods wont work any more and taxpayers have much higher expectations. You can meet and beat those expectations if you start improving efficiency instead of cutting costs and services and frame your public relations campaign to communicate that message.

• Previous Entry: 5 Levels of Data and Intelligence for Solving School Budget Problems
• Next Entry: School Cost Reduction Case History No. 1