Pub. 1 2011-2012 Issue 1

16 SEASON? What’s your B efore sharing a few tips that will help you keep tighter control on your school’s financial health, remember three important principles: 1) The vision and mission of your school must ALWAYS be the top priority. 2) Charter schools hardly ever close for academic reasons, rather they close for financial and manage- ment reasons. 3) Long-term financial solvency is the primary responsibility of school leadership, meaning your School Board and your school’s Director. Take a little time now to streamline your school’s finances, so that you can focus most of your time on the real reason all of us sacrifice so much of our lives for this movement. Your first job is to set realistic fi- nancial benchmarks and policy that will help you monitor your school’s financial health. What are these benchmarks? Of course the answer is the same for most questions about charter schools: it depends! In this case, IT DE- PENDS ON YOUR SEASON. Let’s divide Charter schools into three seasons, and then look at several critical financial benchmarks and policies that should be in place for each. For instance, your life may be like mine, and divided into the single-trying-to-find- yourself season, the newly-married-on-a-shoe-string-budget season and the oh-my-heck-where-did-all-these-kids-come- from season. Let’s consider a proper breakdown for charter schools to be the Start-up Season, the New School Season (1st two or three years of opera- tion) and the Functioning School Sea- son (3+ years of operation). Here are a few quick benchmarks and policies that deserve your attention for each season: START-UP SEASON SAFETY MARGIN: End the start-up year with something in the bank, even if it is only $10,000. PURCHASING: Stick to your budget. If you find out you have not budgeted enough, wait until your first allotment to purchase what you need. Don’t overspend! FACILITY: This is critical! Making the wrong facility choice at this stage can cripple a school for years to come. Schools who spend less than 20% of their total revenues on facility are By Monty Hardy, President | Red Apple Financial