Beyond Compliance: How Do Your School Business Operations Measure Up?

Beyond Compliance: How Do Your School Business Operations Measure Up?

by New Jersey Association of School Business Officials, Rowman and Littlefield Education, Lanham, Md., 2006,102 pp., $19.95 softcover 

Most superintendents have a background in personnel or curriculum and instruction preceded by a successful stint as a principal. School business as a work experience is limited to one or two graduate courses in public school finance and/or school business management. Some may have served on budget committees at the site or district level but few superintendents have risen from the ranks of finance.

For those many, the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials has created a guiding document not in narrative form but rather as a text structured much like an audit.

Each chapter of Beyond Compliance: How Do Your School Business Operations Measure Up? offers practical insights through a series of statements or questions that provide school leaders with a matrix for systemic evaluation of such various areas from insurance to accounting, food service to central supply.

The topics covered are not limited to what would be typically thought of as business office functions. Areas such as food service, transportation, and facility management are identified as well as board meetings and procedures.

This text is an excellent source for both beginning superintendents and those superintendents who have deferred the business function of their organization to others. Using the insightful questions proposed in this book can be an excellent resource for school district leaders to assess the quality of their business office.

Reviewed by Marc Space, superintendent, Taos Municipal Schools, Taos, N.M.