Superintendent's Budget Responsibilities

Superintendent’s Budget Responsibilities

I am very lucky to be able to meet with our District Superintendent any time that I need to. It was not hard at all to schedule an interview with Dr. Largent. The interview turned out to be very informative and being that Dr. Largent was able to tell me his roles in the budget process while here at Rusk but as well as his roles while he was superintendent at a small 1A school. Believe me when I say that his roles were extremely different. Dr. Largent was the sole budget preparer at the 1A district and he is more of just a support person at our current 3A district. Dr. Largent made it very clear even though he is not the main person developing the budget here at Rusk he is familiar and knowledgeable with all aspects of the budget.
Dr. Largent began by explaining his role in the budget process while here at Rusk. He explained that we have an Executive Director of Finance, and she is the lead administrator in the budget process. She brings Dr. Largent updates throughout the budgeting process and together, they make decisions on varies things such as, salary increases, adding personnel, and other request from campuses. He mentioned at this point that we use a Site- Based Budgeting process here at Rusk. Dr. Largent emphasized that he is involved in every step of the budget but the Executive Director of Finance does the vast majority of the work regarding budget.
After Dr. Largent discussed his responsibilities here he briefly mentioned his responsibilities while at a 1A district earlier in his tenure. He explained that he had no Executive Director of Finance to help him with the budget and that he was the sole developer of the budget. Dr. Largent used a Site-Based Budgeting approach there as well, he just stated it was a little harder to distribute funds to cover all request due to the smaller amount of funds available. He also explained that in the smaller district he had more grant monies to utilize. He also mentioned that with the inclusion of grant funds there was more specific identification of allocation of these funds within the budget.
In conclusion, Dr. Largent felt that both experiences as superintendent in different districts were educational in different ways. He was glad of the responsibility to be the sole developer of the budget due the fact that he learned a tremendous amount of knowledge pertaining to preparation of a budget. He is also grateful that know he has Executive Director of Finance to take the sole position of developer of the district budget. The interview was very productive to me and gave me a lot of insight on the budgeting process and responsibilities.


Reflection
After the interview I sat down and typed up the comments that Dr. Largent had made and tried to relate them to my ideas of preparing a budget. Just as Dr. Largent had said, I would enjoy the opportunity to be the main preparer of the budget just to learn how it all comes together. I would also like the fact of having a financial person responsible for preparing it as well. It really is scary thinking about all of continual updates and requirements that have to be included in the budget. I know realize the importance of the preparation of the district budget and how, if not done efficiently, it could be detrimental to a district.