Vestavia Hills School District’s Budget Transformation

Aligning Dollars With Values

Modern school districts face a critical challenge: how to effectively plan, create, and communicate budgets that align with their strategic goals and inspire their communities. As Matt Muller, Chief Revenue Officer at ClearGov, puts it, “Your budget is an expression of the values of your school district, and there ARE specific ways to communicate budget information in a way that energizes your stakeholders to support your mission.”

The answer lies in modernization. Legacy budgeting processes, often characterized by scattered spreadsheets and static communications, are no longer sufficient in an era demanding transparency and stakeholder involvement. Districts must modernize antiquated processes for better efficiency and clearly connect their strategic plans to financial decisions.

Vestavia Hills School District in Alabama embraced this challenge head-on. Faced with a failed tax vote in 2023, they recognized the urgent need for greater transparency and stakeholder engagement. Their journey from traditional methods to a modernized, transparent approach offers valuable insights for districts looking to enhance their own financial practices.

Vestavia Hills School District’s Journey To Budget Modernization

Nestled in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, Vestavia Hills School District serves a community of nearly 7,000 students across nine schools. With an annual budget of $120 million, the district has significant financial responsibilities to its stakeholders.

Courtney Brown, who has been the Chief School Financial Officer (CSFO) for Vestavia Hills School District for six years, brings valuable experience to her role. Before joining the district, she worked in public accounting for 20 years, auditing cities and school boards.

In 2023, Vestavia Hills experienced a significant event that would reshape their approach to budgeting and community engagement.

A Failed Tax Vote Sparks Change

When Vestavia Hills School District proposed a tax increase to fund critical school projects, the community’s response was not what the district had anticipated. Courtney explained:

“We had a failed tax vote in 2023. The community didn’t understand how we were spending our dollars and why existing funds didn’t cover the necessary projects. It highlighted the need for more transparency in the budgeting process, which led us to seek out some additional transparency tools for our stakeholders.”

The Path to Modernization

This wake-up call led Vestavia Hills to modernize their budgeting process. After researching various vendors, they implemented ClearGov’s solutions for a more transparent and user-friendly budgeting system.

“This year was our first year to publish our budget book using ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book and Transparency,” Courtney noted, marking a significant shift in how the district communicates its financial information.

Vestavia Hills’ Best Practices In Strategic Planning

For Vestavia Hills School District, a key part of transforming their budgeting process was ensuring that they could show how the community’s tax dollars directly supported the district’s strategic plan.

Before diving into Vestavia Hills’ approach, it’s important to note that the district already excels in strategic planning, even without using ClearGov’s ClearPlans tool. Their practices align closely with industry best practices and demonstrate a commitment to transparent and effective planning.

Meeting Strategic Planning Best Practices

In creating our ClearPlans products, ClearGov conducted extensive research on local governments and school districts to understand the landscape of strategic planning. This research uncovered several best practices:

1. Clearly defined mission, vision, and values
2. Structured action plan including:
   • Focus areas
   • Goals
   • Action items
3. Clear budget allocation tied to strategic objectives
4. Effective communication of the plan

Vestavia Hills School District demonstrates these best practices in several ways:

• Accessible Strategic Plan: The district provides a direct link to their strategic plan on their website, ensuring easy access for all stakeholders.
• Comprehensive Communication: Courtney elaborated on their approach: “We have shared our strategic plan via messages, YouTube videos, emails to stakeholders. Moving to ClearGov, we highlight how our budget ties to our strategic plan with the ability to add narratives to our plan.”
• Budget Alignment: Courtney explained, “Our budget is closely aligned with our goals outlined in our strategic plan:”
  • Investing in Educators: Courtney noted, “Our FY25 budget prioritizes investments in employing elite educators and staff. We’re able to tie that back to our budget increase for salaries and benefits. We gave raises above the state-mandated 2% to our teachers.”
  • Enhancing Learning Opportunities: “Our budget is providing opportunities for students to experience profound learning by bringing back our STEM program,” Courtney said. “We’ve hired five additional STEM teachers, one for each elementary school to support that.”
  • Improving Leadership and Management: The district has also focused on organizational efficiency. “We’ve implemented management and leadership systems to carry out work in our schools by hiring instructional partners for each school to support our teachers,” said Courtney.

This alignment between strategic planning and budgeting helps Vestavia Hills ensure that every dollar spent supports their overarching goals and vision for the district.

Vestavia Hills’ Best Practices In Budget Building

By partnering with ClearGov, Vestavia Hills saw significant improvements in how they built and managed their budget.

Evolution of the Budgeting Process

Courtney provided insight into how their budgeting process has evolved:

“When I first started here six years ago, it was just basically the CFO preparing the budget. I did it by myself, and my superintendent wanted to move to more of a departmentalized budget, having the department heads take ownership of their own budget and actually know what their money was being spent on.”

The move to a more inclusive budgeting process initially presented challenges, though. Courtney explained:

“In that process, as you can imagine, we were swapping emails and Excel spreadsheets and having a lot of face-to-face meetings.”

However, the adoption of ClearGov has streamlined this collaboration:

“ClearGov made it easier to exchange information. Departments can attach quotes and invoices in the system and give a lot of details about what they’re actually spending their budget dollars on, which really helps to eliminate questions. The ability to match requests to fund sources was really important, too. It makes it a lot easier to reconcile the funds when I can see what we paid from each fund source and match it to what the department said they needed. It’s really streamlined our accounting,” Courtney said.

This shift towards a more collaborative approach aligns with best practices in modern budgeting by emphasizing stakeholder involvement and accountability.

Improved Capital Improvement Planning

Vestavia Hills has also seen significant improvements in their capital improvement planning. Courtney explained:

“We are also required by the state to present a five-year capital improvement plan every year when we do our budget. And the current software we have really only has the capacity to plan for one year at a time. So, I love the fact that in ClearGov’s Capital Improvement module, we can build out our projects over five years, 10 years, however long we need.”

This extended planning capability allows for better long-term financial management and transparency. It also helps stakeholders understand that capital projects are often a marathon, not a sprint

“It’s very helpful for sharing with our stakeholders what capital projects we have planned, how we’re going to pay for them, and the timeline for when they’re actually going to be completed,” said Courtney

Vestavia Hills’ Best Practices In Transparent Communication

Vestavia Hills School District has fully embraced transparency by implementing best practices that improved how they share budget information with their community.

Proactive Communication

Vestavia Hills has adopted a proactive approach to budget communication to ensure information is accessible and easy-to-understand for everyone. This approach represents a significant shift from past practices. Courtney explained their strategy:

“We communicate early and often. All of our budget hearings are on YouTube, making them accessible to anyone who wants to watch.”

“In the past, I’ve read a PowerPoint leveraging charts I built myself. This year, our presentation was so much more robust. You can write summaries for each fund, narratives to describe any changes from multiple years. You can go back as far as you want to display historical information.”

See how Vestavia Hills is leveraging ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book.

Prominent and Accessible Budget Information

Recognizing that even the best information is only useful if people can find it, Vestavia Hills has taken steps to ensure their budget details are front and center:

“We leveraged ClearGov’s custom banners to put the budget details front and center on our website so people didn’t have to hunt for it,” said Courtney

This allows stakeholders to find the budget information they need without having to navigate through multiple pages or complex menus.

Full Transparency with Open Checkbook

Vestavia Hills has taken transparency a step further by implementing an Open Checkbook feature through ClearGov’s Transparency platform. This tool allows the public to see detailed financial transactions, which provides an unprecedented level of openness into the district’s finances.

“It’s a requirement of the state department that we publish our monthly checkbook. With ClearGov’s Open Checkbook, we’ve been able to meet this requirement while providing even more detailed information to our community.”

“You can type in a vendor name and pull it up, and the public can drill down into our revenue and expenditure details. It shows that we’re not trying to hide anything,” said Courtney.

By providing this level of detail and accessibility, Vestavia Hills is not only complying with state mandates but is also setting a new standard for financial transparency.

Feedback from the Community

Of course, one of the primary reasons for overhauling the budgeting process was to build trust within the community and show that the school district was being a good steward of its citizens’ tax dollars.

“I’ve had several people in the community tell me that they had questions, but after I presented the budget, I got feedback that they found the answers to their questions in ClearGov,” said Courtney.

“The overall feedback from the community has been very positive. Many have said, ‘I learned so much from the budget presentation as well as the details found in the digital budget book.’”

How Other Districts Can Follow Vestavia Hills’ Path To Budgeting Excellence

Vestavia Hills School District’s journey offers valuable insights for school districts looking to modernize their budgeting processes. Their experience highlights three key best practices:

1. Leverage Your Strategic Plan: Align every budget decision with your district’s overarching goals and vision.
2. Facilitate Easy Collaboration: Use modern tools, like ClearGov, to streamline information sharing and decision-making among all stakeholders.
3. Communicate Early and Often: Proactively share budget information in accessible, engaging formats to build trust and understanding within your community.

By embracing these practices, your school district can transform your budgeting process from a yearly task into an ongoing dialogue with your community.

Schedule a quick demo to see if ClearGov is right for your school district.