Financial planning is the key to providing a high-quality instructional plan. A 5-year financial plan is typically updated by looking at district financial history, future instructional plans, staffing requirements, and revenue projections. Planning assumptions must be clearly understood by the financial team and the community. (MLH)

Strategies outlined for developing and maintaining an administrative guide as the chief communication tool in a public school system. (Author/ MLF)

Board members should look at the demands from employee groups and make sure that they understand what the actual costs are on a short-term basis and on a long-term basis. (Author/MLF)

Loss control activities can help a school district avoid certain risks and reduce others. (MLF)

Thirty-three school boards responded to an energy survey administered by the Ontario Association of School Business Officials. Energy savings are illustrated in tables. (MLF)

A growth in organized school employee groups, particularly teacher groups, may require school boards to develop and maintain an affirmative employee relations program to identify and meet needs before they reach the crisis level and, therefore, prevent the issues from developing around which employee unions must justify their existence.…

Analysis of 2001 United States Supreme Court decision in "Earls v. Board of Education of Tecumseh Public Schools," upholding random drug testing for students participating in extracurricular activities. Discusses implications for school policy and practice. (Contains 15 references.) (PKP)

During negotiations, board members must face certain realities, including the leveling effects of collective bargaining, the predominance of group over individual teacher needs, the importance of sophisticated skills, and the adversarial, emotional nature of negotiating. The board negotiating team must seek an agreement beneficial to both parties…

A cash-flow plan allows districts lead time for investing, borrowing, reducing or delaying expenditures, expanding revenue sources, informing the community, and avoiding surprises. Planners should identify type, timing, and amount of revenues and expenditures and then compare revenues and expenditures to determine (and accommodate) shortfalls or…

Describes the cost and causes of the school maintenance "crises"; lists seven questions to determine if a school district has a quality maintenance program; describes consequences of deferred school maintenance in Yuma (Arizona) Union High School District. (PKP)

An electronic news service called REDINET provides Indiana school management with statewide coverage of legislative committees, state agencies, and others. Individual school districts and subgroups are also able to communicate with each other. (MLF)

Describes issues related to the Ontario educational reform legislation, a significant aspect of which is a new student-focused funding model. The stated purpose of the new funding model is to ensure that education funding operates in a "fair and nondiscriminatory manner" across the province. Asserts that the legislation does not satisfactorily…

The author contends that districts should reject binding interest arbitration as a means of resolving an impasse in contract negotiations, charging that it hampers good faith bargaining, adversely affects fiscal and operational management of the school system, and diminishes the governing role of the board of education. (MJL)

With the "Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education" decision, a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court resolved the split between circuit courts over public school districts' liability for money damages under Title IX. Boards may be held liable when school officials are deliberately indifferent to on-campus student-to-student sexual…

School boards are woefully unprepared to deal with "make or buy" issues, due to massive union efforts to eliminate or restrict board freedom to contract for services. Teachers neither understand nor support a market economy. School boards' contracting out ability will not be secure until favorable legislative options are considered and…