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Beaverton School District excels at the business of education
Independent expert review helps Oregon educators "go to school" on best business practices
The Beaverton School District has an excellent leadership model, an innovative approach to allocating resources to schools, and a superior school safety and security operation, but needs to improve its use of technology in key areas.
Those are among the key findings of an independent review conducted on the district's business practices by the Oregon Association of School Business Officials and Oregon School Boards Association, through a partnership with the Chalkboard Project. This independent review delivered on March 10 gave the Beaverton School District high marks overall and a smart plan for improvement in specific areas.
Chalkboard has provided an $85,000 grant to OASBO to review business operations practices in up to five volunteer Oregon school districts. Through this rigorous review process, school districts across the state will learn more about the best practices for running their central business offices and potential savings they can achieve.
The Beaverton School District is the first to go through this review. A 22-member team consisting of OASBO members, staff of the Oregon School Boards Association, school business officials from the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials who have performed similar reviews, and other business experts conducted the review. The team looked at a range of areas, from the way the district processes its payroll to the way it provides food services to students. Among its major findings:
-The district uses an innovative approach to allocating resources to schools equitably and based on need, and this approach should be modeled in other districts.
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The district incorporates many creative strategies to strengthen its staff team, including utilizing the expertise of Intel and NIKE employees, using teachers on special assignment to spark interest in the district at teacher recruiting fairs, and using a district-wide innovative process team to help solve problems raised by staff.
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The district has a stellar property liability and student safety program, making good use of outside law enforcement agencies and its own school resource officers. Also, school buses are replaced regularly, and new buses include global positioning software.
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The district faces resource challenges in upgrading its use of technology so it can integrate more functions (such as employee leave and payroll processing), and in doing more pre-planning for its future facility needs.
"We were honored to be the first district selected for this review. It will benefit our students, staff and the overall district," said Superintendent Jerome Colonna of the Beaverton School District. "We welcome suggestions on how we can improve our operating practices so that we can use our resources as efficiently and effectively as possible. It is encouraging to be made aware of several areas where this independent review team believes the district is doing well, and were committed to implementing as many of the suggestions as possible."
Similar reviews will be conducted in up to four other districts diverse in geography and size in the coming months.
"The project was a huge success, thanks to an experienced team of reviewers and the cooperation of everyone involved," said Angie Peterman, noting the group had a combined 300 years experience in all the practices reviewed in Beaverton. Peterman is president of OASBO and OSBA Administrative Services director. "We learned a lot that will be applied in future reviews so that all districts, regardless of size, can access numerous resources and best practices," she added.
Beaverton hasn't wasted time implementing good ideas. As a result of the on-site reviews, here's a sampling of what staff has already started:
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Food service employees have begun a cost analysis of the use of Styrofoam trays versus reusable trays.
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An outside audit of internal and external communications has been completed and presented to the school board. The district will begin the process of refining and implementing the recommendations, which include tasks such as expanding electronic communications and targeting more outreach to citizens who don't have children in school.
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An IT/Business Systems Analyst position has been requested in the 2008-09 budget process.
After completing all five reviews, OASBO will build a database of best practices based on factors such as district size, location and socioeconomic factors. This toolkit will be shared with districts statewide.
Chalkboard's interest in this issue grew out of two research findings: an analysis of Oregon school spending that indicated statewide average spending on district business operations is higher than the national average, and public opinion surveys showing more than half of Oregonians believe schools can do more to eliminate unnecessary spending.
"This pilot project is all about making clear what districts already are doing well in their business operations and how they might improve so that every possible dollar gets to the classroom," said Sue
Hildick, Chalkboard Project president. "We thank the Beaverton School District for stepping up to show that opening your doors to an independent review by your peers and community leaders not only provides other districts and the public with information about what you're doing well, but also brings new ideas to make business operations even more efficient. It's a process where everybody wins."
Read the executive summary of the Beaverton School District business practices review.
(http://www.chalkboardproject.org/images/PDF/BSDExecSummary.pdf)
Read a one-page summary of the key review findings. (http://www.chalkboardproject.org/images/PDF/Beavertonreview.pdf)
About OASBO
The Oregon Association of School Business Officials (OASBO) is a professional organization affiliated with the Association of School Business Officials International. OASBO was organized in 1962 and includes 350 members from school districts, education
service districts and community colleges. OASBO's members include business managers, accounting staff, superintendents, and representatives from each of the eight areas reviewed in this process. OASBO's mission is to support public education by providing resources, programs, activities and training for school business officials. For more information, visit
www.oasbo.com.
About OSBA
The Oregon School Boards Association serves 197 Oregon school boards, 17 community colleges, and 20 education service districts by providing legislative advocacy for public education at state and federal levels; leadership training, legal and policy services, financial, insurance, human resources, communications and other services. For more information, visit
www.osba.org.
About Chalkboard Project
Launched in early 2004, Chalkboard Project exists to inspire Oregonians to do what it takes to make the states K-12 public schools among the nations best, while strengthening our school systems financial accountability to taxpayers. Chalkboard aims to help create a more informed and engaged public who understand and address the tough choices and trade-offs required to build strong schools, and to enable statewide programs that can be applied at the local level to improve school quality, accountability, and funding. To date, Chalkboard has connected with about 100,000 Oregonians, asking for their best ideas to strengthen the states K-12 public schools. It also has partnered with other education organizations to create the Open Book$ Web site
(www.openbooksproject.org) to track school district spending.
Chalkboard an initiative of Foundations For A Better Oregon is sponsored by a growing list of independent Oregon foundations. The foundations providing major support are: The Collins Foundation, The Ford Family Foundation, Jeld-Wen Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation and The Oregon Community Foundation. For more information about Chalkboard and to learn how to get involved, call (877) YOUR-K12 or visit
www.chalkboardproject.org.
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