EDLD 5342 Reflection

Throughout this course I have gained an extreme amount of knowledge and even made some better working relations with other school personnel and with members of our cohort. Every portion of the course helped me obtain knowledge and skills to better understand school finance. This was by far the most in-depth class I have taken in my graduate studies. I would like to share some of the knowledge and skills I have obtained throughout this course.
The post self-assessment gives me a very good idea of where my strengths and weaknesses are pertaining to district budgeting, personnel, resource utilization, financial management, and technology application. I entered the course with a couple of strengths, but throughout the course I feel competent to say that could lead in six of the identifiers in Competency 8. I have been a member of my home town school board for 8 years and feel that this experience gives me a great strength when knowing how to work collaboratively with the board of trustees to develop a district budget. I have been involved in numerous procedure developments and feel that the knowledge I gained from the coursework will make me a leader in the area of developing and establishing procedures for accurate, effective, ethical purchasing and financial record keeping and reporting.
I have experience with two different districts with way different demographics. I believe that this experience as well as the knowledge obtained throughout this course makes me strong when acquiring, allocating, and managing resources according to district vision and priorities, including obtaining and using funding from various sources. Another area of strength is being able to use district and staff evaluation data for personnel policy development and decision making. I work in a district that is high on data from all stake holders when making policy and decisions. My knowledge in this area will provide me with insight and guidance when becoming a superintendent.
An area that I would once consider to be one of my worst aspects is managing my own time and even that of my employees. However, the longer I am in education and in a leadership role it has become one of my strengths. I believe that I will effectively manage my own time and the time of others to enhance district operations. Once again I feel I work in a district that is very extensive when pertaining to personnel management, including requirements related to certifying, recruiting, screening, selecting, evaluating, disciplining, reassigning, and dismissing personnel. I have had experience with almost all of the areas listed above and feel very confident in having the knowledge and skill to perform all of them effectively.
The only area that I would consider myself competent in is when developing and implementing plans for using technology and information systems to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of school district operations. The biggest reason I don’t consider this strength is due to the continual advancement of technology. I need to work more with the districts technology staff in order to become more efficient when referring to technology.
There are still a few areas that I consider to be areas of need for me. One of the first is being able to apply procedures for effective budget planning and management. Basically, I feel that experience will be the key to developing strength in this area. The second is being able to facilitate and evaluate effective account auditing and monitoring that complies with legal requirements and local district policies. Again experience and learning the legal requirements associated with this will help me to improve my knowledge and ability. Third is being able to apply legal concepts, regulations, and codes that are required. There are so many of these there is no way that they can be easily learned. Just as with the other areas I need improvement on, time and experience will be the key to become knowledgeable and efficient in this area. Finally, is being able to use revenue forecasting and enrollment forecasting to address personnel and budget needs accurately. I did actual discuss this with my Executive Director of Finance during one of the interviews and got quite a lot of information pertaining to it from her. However, with basing an entire budget on forecasting I don’t yet feel comfortable in this area.
With all of these in mind I will have to say that the interviews I had with the Executive Director of Finance were the most beneficial of all the requirements of the course. I see as a future superintendent that it is extremely important to have someone in the business office that is knowledgeable as well as myself when pertaining to school budgeting. She made very confusing things more understandable and I actually feel that I can share this information among others. I enjoyed the work within my wiki group as well. Even though it was just two of us we shared numerous commonalities and several different insights on a few things. I feel it would have been better if we had had a larger group to submit input. The lectures and readings are always beneficial to me. They share pertinent information that helps me to understand the material as well as outcome expectations. Again, this has been the most in-depth graduate course I have taken and has been the most educating class to me. There is still much to be learned about school finance and I am encouraging myself to continue improving my knowledge and skill in this area.