Stop thinking school budget cuts and start thinking economics

April 6th, 2011 by Steve

School district spend considerable time thinking about budgets – mostly about how to balance budgets. They should also be thinking about school district economics. Why? because these are two completely different thought processes.  Budget balancing focuses on how to balance revenues and spending and making cuts to services and programs.

School economic thinking focuses the conversation on value and results.   When we think economics we naturally ask different question.  What does it cost us to provide a service? What does it cost other districts? What should it cost us to provide that service?  How can we provide that service at a lower cost?  Why is our purchasing approval process so complicated and time consuming?  What does that process really cost us?  Why do we pay $22/hour plus benefits when other districts pay $15/hour plus benefits for driver positions?  Are our labor rates competitive? Why do we pay $110,ooo in compensation for a teacher and a similar district in our county pays $75,000/year?  Can we justify that?  What is the cost and fact based benefit of an instructional program?  How many students can a counselor serve in a specific student body.  What mix of school spending (class size, support and supplamental services) provide the best results for students and our community?

School district leaders will find that they will discover the solutions to the current financial issues when they start thinking differently about money.

Steve Pereus

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Teacher Performance Evaluation and Incentive Systems

March 24th, 2011 by Steve

This is the first of a series of comments on teacher evaluation and incentive compensation systems. 

Many states are now searching for teacher performance management and evaluation systems that can be aligned with incentives to improve academic achievement.  Many Teacher’s unions and teachers abhor the idea.  Evidence from the public and private sector and schools indicates that when designed properly, these systems can produce improved results.

I have designed performance management and incentive compensation plans for superintendents, executives, managers and front line employees and performed extensive research on the hallmarks of successful systems.  Designed properly, these systems can help the average individual achieve higher levels of performance.  Before designing the systems, districts need a framework that moves them through the process of developing their system.  Key steps in this process include defining their key issues and goals and values. They also need to know key performance issues that need to be addressed at the district, school, classroom and student level, and the behaviours and practices that will help them overcome these issues and realize their goals.  From their they can define the measures or performance – some factual and data driven, others based on behaviour, skill and performance.  Leaders will also need to decide on the mix of district wide, school, and individual performance goals in the plan design. 

Next week’s blog on this issue will discuss the princples that underly effective performance management and compensation systems and how they relate to school districts.

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Michigan and Ohio School District Benchmarking Initiative

March 10th, 2011 by Steve

Enlit LLC is launching a School District Performance and Efficiency Benchmarking Initiative in Michigan and Ohio where we already have school data and participants. The initiative encompasses education, administration and operations efficiency; human resourcse staffing analysis using or school staffing model; high school, elementary and special education; all administrative and all operations areas and departments; infomation systems and technology; value added academic performance measures. Our assessment tool includes over 500 traditional and well researched performance measures. The Enlit system and services provide reliable data and benchmarks that you need to help you identify opportunities to streamline, right size and realign spending.

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Enlit Helps Districts Become Leaner and More Efficient

March 10th, 2011 by Steve

Dear District Leader
Re: Enlit Helps School Districts Become Leaner and More Efficient
Are you looking for new and innovative ways to reduce costs? Most districts will try to tackle this problem without the necessary data, measures and benchmarks that are needed to factually assess efficiency and effectiveness of every area. And without this knowledge they can’t see or realize higher levels of efficiency and lower costs that are possible in high performing schools. Instead they will be forced to cut salaries, reduce benefits, lay off staff, reduce services and attempt to raise taxes in an anti-tax environment.
Enlit LLC has used our experience, process and technology to help districts identify cost savings that range from 8% to 30% at the department level and 8% to as much as 25% at the district level. Most of these opportunities were missed by our clients even thought they had been cutting costs for the last 9 years.
We help schools achieve these results with a proven process that uses data, our school evaluation software and extensive improvement experience. We help districts quickly identify opportunities to become more efficient, align resources using standards, assess strategies, reduce waste and adapt best practices that help districts get the best value and performance for students from existing or reduced resources.
Enlīt’s system integrates experience, a proven process, school evaluation software, and peer benchmarking network that helps school leaders see the full scope of improvement potential in their districts. We provide our clients with:
• A complete analysis of how effectively and efficiently your districts resources are being used, and guidance and options for improving efficiency, reducing costs and realigning spending.

• An annual license to our web site that includes 75 different scorecards and 400 measures on every department, and comparisons to peers that can be used by anyone you select in your district.

• Ongoing support via webinars and coaching on how to use the Enlit system to get better results.

• We also provide detailed district or department assessments, turn around plans and peer group benchmarking and consulting on any operational area.

Whether you are a board member, superintendent or business official, we can equip you with the knowledge, data and tools that will help you reduce costs and improve the operating performance of your district a division or department. We would welcome the opportunity to introduce you to our services and technology, provide actual case histories and a list of excellent references. Please contact us at 419-392-1775 or scpereus@enlit10.com for more information.

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School Consolidation Case History – Focus on Basics

November 10th, 2010 by Steve

State legislatures often see consolidation of services as part of the strategy for solving district financial challenges. Our firm was retained to evaluate district transportation in a county with 11 districts. We proposed evaluating the operational efficiency of the transportation departments rather than spend money on an expensive consolidation study. We designed a thorough benchmarking tool that involved key data, practices, policies, interviews and site visits. We discovered a wide range (25% below the mean to 35% above the mean) in costs using traditional measures and found that traditional cost comparisons are inadequate for predicting what costs should be. We developed a cost and performance model for the area that shows districts how to push the cost curve down, avoid consolidation and continue to provide personal service to students. The area can now reduce unnecessary costs and if necessary look at the next step of consolidation. Lesson learned – start with the basics, improve those immediately and then look to more complex solutions.

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School Cost Reduction Case History No. 1

November 10th, 2010 by Steve

Several school districts were faced with challenges in thier business/treasury office. District leadership thought the office could operate more efficiently but the business managers didnt see opportunities for improvement (without any data to support the observation). We conducted a thorough assessment of the operations and using benchmarking identified a wide range in the costs of key services provided by the business departments. In fact the district with the lowest cost per student had the highest cost per payroll check and highest cost per AP check. We also correlated business practices to efficiency and used the results to provide a plan of action for reducing costs by 10% to 20% within 6 months. Lesson Learned -Department leaders often cant see the opportunity to improve because they dont have any way of measuring the cost or efficiency of thier services. Data and analysis shed light on the opportunities and solutions that help reduce unnecessary costs.

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