I build budgets for a living. My own budget workbook for the schools I work with has seven tabs, dozens of formulas and tables and hundreds of links back and forth. All that so the "Budget" tab shows realistic revenue projections and expenses in line with the operation of the school. A single error in any one of those tabs, formulas, or links and the whole system can collapse. What looks like a balanced budget could actually be unsustainable.
A few weeks ago when the first set of state funding projections was sent out. Schools and districts noticed that the numbers didn't make sense--they showed less funding than the current year on the same enrollment. I suppose this is why. The State Office, in its projections of enrollment, provided the legislature with faulty numbers generated from a single error in a massive spreadsheet. The result was an under-appropriation of $25 million.
As a result of this error, Associate Superintendent Todd Hauber and Finance Director Larry Newton have resigned. I have nice things to say about both of them, but that will wait for a future post.
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