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Imagine pondering what your district operations would look like under a set of worsening scenarios: What would happen if the budget were to decrease next year by 2%? What if it were to decrease by more than 5%? Even worse, what if there were a decline of 10% or more? What would we do differently and how would we make those tough choices? How would the community react? How about our staff? Would our Board hold together through the difficult decisions? Would chaos ensue?
n the Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools (FCPS), we faced a high degree of uncertainty about what would happen to our 2010 budget. This article describes a significantly redesigned process through which our district planned for a range of budget cuts from roughly 2% to 10%, which translated to reductions ranging from $40 million to well over $200 million.
Managing through this uncertainty and preparing realistic options under different scenarios took our planning efforts to a new level of managerial effectiveness. It was an intensive process that included a variety of stakeholders in unprecedented ways. It built alignment externally with our various stakeholders. Internally, it led to the formation of meaningful bonds between people on the leadership team from different departments. As we worked together, people really started to look at how departments could help one another.
Getting Started
First, we were guided by clear priorities defined at the Board level by our Strategic Governance Initiative, which articulates our beliefs, vision, mission, and student achievement goals (Figure 1). Second, we relied on an unprecedented level of community input and collaboration to help inform and test our priorities. Third, we used an innovative structure at the central office to evaluate and make decisions about the over 175 programs offered at the Fairfax County Public Schools. For each, we decided as a team whether to keep, reduce, redesign or eliminate the program.
Budget Background & Scenario Approach
As a fiscally dependent school district, over 75% of our budget is funded by Fairfax County. This differs from the average Virginia school division which receives approximately half of its financial support from its local government. Fairfax’s next largest funding source, the State of Virginia, adopted its FY2010 budget with an approximately 7 percent reduction to K-12 education.
