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.
5 Levels of Data and Intelligence for Solving School Budget Problems
August 2nd, 2010 by SteveEducational decision makers are in a new challenging era that requires better knowledge, deeper data and more insight than traditional information systems provide. And many decision makers, when given data, struggle with how to use massive amounts of data to get better results or improve finances outside the classroom. Without deeper levels of understanding and a process that can simply the complexity of educational data, decision makers may be making decisions that allow inefficient use of funds to continue unabated, ineffective programs to continue and practices that harm the district remain intact. Few educational leaders or their communities can avoid these mistakes.
Educational leaders at all levels dont really need more data. They need access to a system that transforms massive amounts of traditional and non tradition data into knowledge, insight and intelligence that tells a factual story about performance in every department. They need the ability to know what levels of efficiency and effectiveness are possible based on peer performance. And they need to have the insights and facts to know how and where to make changes that produce better performance and lower costs. How do they gain this level of understanding?
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Introducing the Founder of Enlit
March 8th, 2010 by SteveSteven C. Pereus, Summary
President and founder of Enlīt. Over 16 years successful experience leading and helping schools and private sector firms overcome strategic, financial, operating, organizational and performance challenges.
Accelerate Educational Improvement
March 3rd, 2010 by SteveEducational Benchmarking for Accelerated Learning and Improvement
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing performance and practices to peers and others with the goal of learning how to do something better, more efficiently and more effectively. Benchmarking is common place with people and organizations and even governments that are striving to improve. Successful athletes compare their techniques, coaches strive to learn from the successful teams, doctors share practices and businesses study their competitors. The Japanese learned how to make better copy machines by taking competitor’s equipment apart and learning how the machines were engineered. In fact learning from others is a major means of knowledge transfer and development.
Video Introduction to Enlit
February 22nd, 2010 by adminSteve Pereus, Founder and President of Enlit, explains how Enlit helps schools reach a whole new level of efficiency and effectiveness that they cant achieve with their existing approaches to cost cutting and budgeting.
School Financial Improvement
February 22nd, 2010 by SteveThe Budget isn’t Enough to Solve Today’s Financial Challenges
Nearly every school district in the country is facing tough financial decisions; some are facing deteriorating financial health. State revenues are down, demographic trends and competition are impacting enrollment and health care and other costs are rising while expectations soar. District boards and leaders find themselves in mid year meetings faced with decisions and few alternatives to cut teaching staff and salaries. And the demands and stress on superintendents rise as staff are cut and administrators take on double duty. Ultimately school leaders balance their budgets because they have to – but in the process of cutting they aren’t necessarily creating leaner, more efficient or more effective organizations.