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| July 2013 |
What's New at ASBO
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Applications are being accepted for the Brice and Shirley Phillips Best Practice Award. Please see the information on how to apply and what the winner receives.
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An option to the individual ASBO dues is now available to school systems to expand membership opportunities to more staff and to save money at the same time. The new Institutional dues option enables an LEA to pay a lump sum to cover a group of school business professionals rather than pay for them individually. For example, for $3,000, an LEA can have an unlimited number of ASBO members!
Talk to your ASBO liaison for more information or email John Lang, Executive Director at asbomddc1@gmail.com or call 410-608-0911.
JOIN ASBO today and enjoy the benefits of membership and develop life-long relationships with other professionals.
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Messages From The Board
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At the 2013 ASBO 61st Spring Conference, the membership voted unanimously for the new Board of Directors.
NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS
The new Board of Directors were installed by ASBOI Vice President, Terri Simmons
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Calendar of Events
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Hear how one school system involved multiple departments including curriculum, technology, facilities, purchasing and transportation, to develop a comprehensive Sustainability program. Learn the advantages of applying the Triple Bottom Line concept in your own school system to foster and grow a sustainability program.
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Awards & Accolades
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ASBO thanks the following retiring members for their many years of service to their schools and the community, and for their support of ASBO.
We hope that they will remain active in ASBO to share their experience and knowledge.
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Congratulations and Good Luck to Catherine Poling in her new capacity as President for the Maryland Society for Educational Technology (MSET)!
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ASBO International has announced its 2012-2013 Meritorious Budget Award Winners. As of May 1, 2013 the award has been given to Baltimore County Public Schools, the Board of Education of Wicomico County, and Cecil County Public Schools.
This prestigious award recognizes school districts for promoting sound fiscal management, effective use of educational resources, and excellence in annual school budget presentation.
ASBO MD&DC joins ASBO International in congratulating these winners and the dedicated staff who earned the awards.
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2013-14 DWIGHT JACOBUS SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS
RENEWALS:
Nicole Schreffenberger will be a junior at Salisbury University this fall. She is well on her way to accomplishing her goal of becoming a Certified Public Accountant. She states she will graduate with 150 credits when she takes her CPA exam. Currently Nicole has a 3.911 GPA. She has earned A's on all her classes except for one B which upset her because it was almost an A. She has made the Dean's List every semester so far. She is very thankful for the ASBO Scholarship she has received.
Molly Pittman will be a junior at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is still intent on becoming a secondary math teacher. She is majoring in math and minoring in educational studies. Two days a week she interns in a special needs classroom and works one on one with a seventh grade girl. She also plays math games with middle school students to motivate them to enroll in more science, technology, engineering and math courses when they enter high school. Her current GPA is 3.35 and she too is on the Dean's List.
Rebecca Kneebone will be entering her sophomore year at the University of Maryland at College Park. She has officially declared her double major in Secondary Education and History. She states that attending the University of Maryland has been an amazing experience and every day she is more sure that teaching is what she wants to do. Her current GPA is 3.75.
Victoria Shull will be a sophomore at Salisbury University. She is majoring in early childhood and elementary education while minoring in ESOL. She has taken five classes each semester and is determined to finish the five year program in four years. In addition to her class load she has mentored at Pinehurst Elementary School for over forty hours during the past semester. During the summer she plans on working as a Camp Counselor with 3rd and 6th grade students. Her current GPA is 3.55.
FIRST TIME RECIPIENTS:
Bonnie Barrett is a graduating senior at St. Michael's High School in Talbot County. She currently has a GPA of 3.76 and is ranked in the top five in her class. She will attend either Salisbury University or McDaniel College in the fall and will be majoring in secondary education with the intent of teaching Social Studies. During her high school career she has been a member of the Drama Club, Jazz Band, National Honor Society, Tri Music, Honor Society and manager for the school's soccer team.
Bridgette Roa is a graduating senior at Wheaton High School in Montgomery County. She currently has a 3.53 GPA and will attend the University of Maryland at College Park this coming fall. She plans on majoring in early childhood education and becoming a kindergarten teacher. She excelled in high school, taking many honors and AP classes. She passed multiple AP exams and received the AP Scholar Award. She has been president of the Student Government during her junior and senior years at Wheaton. Bridgette has also been a cheerleader and a member of the softball team. She has volunteered at a local elementary for the past three summers. She also took a child development class in high school in which she created lesson plans and led a classroom of twelve (12) four year olds once a week for a year. She states "Teachers have positively influenced me and I hope to have the same impact on others."
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Douglas Pindell, Director of Purchasing in Howard County was selected as our 2013 recipient of ASBO's Paul Bell Award. This most prestigious award was presented at the 2013 Spring Conference.
Congratulations Doug!
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Baltimore County Public Schools welcomes Lloyd Brown as Executive Director of Technology and
Keith Fletcher as Auditor IV!
Also, congratulations to Geoffrey Bond in his newly appointed position as Position Management Officer!
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ASBO International has announced the recipients of its prestigious 2013 Pinnacle Award. Visit asbointl.org to learn more about the award.
2013 was another successful year for the Pinnacle Awards program, with 18 applications submitted. The selection panel emphasized how impressed they were with the quality of the applications, the innovative ideas, the caliber of the applicants, and the wide variety of topics.
As school business officials, we can be extremely proud of our colleagues who continue to bring new ideas to their communities and to the field. PINNACLE OF EXCELLENCE AWARDScotlyn J. Ecker
Project title: A State-wide Tool for School Finance Literacy
Associate Vice President & Controller
Carthage College
Kenosha, WI
PINNACLE OF ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
John D. Fitzgerald
Project title: Project: BusSTAR (Supporting Teaching by Assisting in Reading)
Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance
Lake Orion Community Schools
Lake Orion, MI
Joseph Marquardt
Project title: Energy Conservation and Efficiency through Kilowatt
Director of Business & HR Services
School District of New London
New London, WI
Ron Orr, Ph.D., CPA
Project title: Leveling the Playing Field for All Students
Chief Financial Officer
Pattonville School District
St. Louis, MO
Congratulations to the 2013 Pinnacle Award recipients and their supervisors for supporting their innovative ideas and their communities. |
Featured Articles
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An excerpt from Art of Managing - Kick Mediocrity to the Curb in Pursuit of Extraordinary by Art Petty
Mediocre is on display daily in too many areas of our society and in too many of our businesses. From the boss who just doesn’t care to our government seemingly barely functioning to the miserable help-lines of too many firms to the slow gait...the shuffle of retail workers at organizations that definitely don’t care, ordinary and average are epidemic.
Mediocrity has a way of numbing our senses and taking the fight out of us. It impacts everyone at all levels of leadership and all employee groups. Individually and collectively, we reduce our standards to the lowest accepted level and then shuffle along dispensing the ordinary until something shocks our system. Often, the shock comes too late.
As a manager, you play a critical part in either perpetuating mediocrity or helping your team break free in pursuit of extraordinary. The latter is a lot more fun and rewarding for all involved.
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Technology in the classroom can be valuable, but not without its challenges. The key is well thought out policies.
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Software implementation can be as time-consuming, complex, and costly as any other project - but it doesn't have to be.
By Robert Weathers, School Business Affairs
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The rules of school finance have changed dramatically and school business officials have an opportunity to take on a vital leadership role.
By William Hartman, Ph.D
School Business Affairs
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The AP (5/31, Cassidy) reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan "is traveling to Atlanta to highlight President Barack Obama'sâ„¢s effort to expand access to early learning programs nationally," noting that he will take part in "a town hall meeting with Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed" at a local school. The AP notes that Georgia'sâ„¢s pre-K program is considered a national leader.
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Encouraging more opportunities for students in science, technology, engineering and math offers many benefits, such as opening multiple career opportunities for students, bringing the business community closer to schools, and closing gender and race gaps in STEM fields, leadership experts Jill Berkowicz and Ann Myers write in this blog post. In addition, STEM should be seen as a theme around which more creative lessons can be developed in the arts and humanities, rather than as a force crowding out non-STEM subjects, they write.
Education Week/Leadership 360 blog (5/7)
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Educator and blogger Adam Provost in this post writes about a recent trip to New Zealand, in which he examined the country's school model. Provost includes a detailed account of the school day, which includes daily "teatime" to relax and collaborate and 10 hours of professional development over a six-day period, which is built into the schedule.
Edutopia.org/Adam Provost's blog (06 May.)
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Generally, a group health plan may not discriminate against an individual based on a health factor. However, there is an exception for certain wellness programs. Health Care Reform adopted the regulation relating to HIPAA nondiscrimination and wellness programs. Recently, the Agencies issued final regulation relating to this
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Something To Think About
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The HCPS budget office has utilized secondary systems to produce the exhibits for the annual published budget presentation in the past. An access database has retained the information for the current and historical budgets, actual expenditures and full time employee staffing. The Hyperion product was utilized each fall to project the future employee costs for step and cost of living (COLA) raises the board of education would propose in their budget.
Harford County Public Schools (HCPS) has managed the fiscal reporting systems with Lawson Financial products. The current fiscal reports are structured to report the status of the budget and actuals in the Maryland State Department Education (MSDE) reporting format. The budget office met with representatives from Lawson to describe the 2 reporting needs to be addressed by HCPS. We needed to be able to report the budget status by the expenditures occurring within MSDE categories and by the major HCPS programs. The Lawson Budget Module or LBP appears to offer many of the attributes we needed but not all of them.
We wanted a system that could forecast step and cost of living (COLA) increases, and would take care of school based allocated expenses. The school based allocation effects approximately 20 types of expenses and is allocated based on the number of students, teachers or square footage. We worked with our consultant and had models developed that are dependent on these three variables, which can be updated, run and then uploaded into LBP.
Our group consisting of Mary Edmunds, Edward Fields, Michelle Sledge and Jeannine Ravenscraft , who have exported the current years (FY13 Budget) and future years (FY14 Budget) to the LBP module to capture the fiscal data. We extracted the workforce data from the Lawson Financial System. The step and COLA raises were projected via the workforce and the school allocations. This data was used to balance to the proposed budget. We have to run a parallel system utilizing the Access database until the beginning of July when we will officially switch over to LBP.
The LBP module did not produce the exhibits in the format we need for our annual published budget presentation and we have worked with the consultant to extract the data via Crystal Reports to satisfy this component of our budget book. We also had to have the consultant develop a crystal report to send the annual budget request out to each of our budget managers to complete and send back to our division with their subsequent years budget request.
In summary it will save time in Budget preparation and eliminate the need for the Hyperion product as the Budget Office was the only area using this software.
For additional information contact Ed Fields or Jim Jewell at Harford County Public Schools.
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Association of School Business Officials, MD & DC 1200C Agora Drive Suite 241, Bel Air, MD 21014 410-608-0911 |