As a school business official, you are accountable for your district’s financial success, making decisions that impact all facets of student learning. As you face these serious budget cuts, it is especially important that you have all the necessary tools at your disposal to best serve your community, and, most importantly, your students. The future of education funding is in flux, and in order to keep the doors to your schools open, and to gain insight on upcoming trends, we must be able to put our collective minds together to find answers and solutions to our economic woes.
During most budget balancing exercises, professional development opportunities for district staff is usually the first to go. Unfortunately, during troubled times, professional development is one of the things that we should focus on the most. During times of economic troubles, most corporations beef up their marketing budgets in order to get a bigger piece of the market share in order to survive. If we took any lesson from them, it should be that this is when school districts should embrace professional development opportunities, and not remove those resources from our toolkits. By stopping professional development, we are isolating ourselves from others across the nation who more likely than not, have answers and solutions to your problems. During these hard times, it is very difficult to keep good employees motivated and engaged. Offering them professional development tools is one way to keep motivation up. Giving them the tools needed to get through it all.
You can find many of the answers and solutions to your district’s econmic woes all in one place. By attending the Association of School Business Officials International’s 2011 Annual Meeting & Expo, you will gather best practices, case studies, and contacts that will benefity our district. In just three short days, you will have had access to a myriad of educational sessions that you can carry back to your school system and apply to some of your problems and issues. More than not, you will see more sessions you would like to attend than you have time for. We have taken care of that one for you. As part of your registration, you will have access to more than 80+ hours of recorded sessions from the meeting. That means you will be able to review the information from every one of the 80+ sessions offered. You can share these resources with your entire team, as topics will cover a wide variety of interest areas such as green facilities management, fraud prevention, stretching school dollars, and many other topics. You will also have access to over 150 exhibitors who have come together in one place to help you find that one solution you can’t find any where else.
More information about ASBO’s Annual Meeting and Expo can be found at:
http://www.asbointl.org/2011AnnualMeeting/5017.htm