By Kevin Kolb, CPA, CFO, MSBO Board Member, Assistant Superintendent of Finance, Gratiot-Isabella ISD
When I was first hired as a business manager of a school district in 1992, my first challenge was to learn how a district operates from day to day. Having worked for a CPA firm for six years, primarily in governmental audits, I knew the accounting side of school districts. But the day-to-day operations was another matter. Now things were much simpler then for sure. The retirement rate was 5% for everyone, the consolidated application was about three pages – typed on a typewriter, and instead of submitting FID, districts submitted a typed form B. To figure out how to do something, I would read the instructions (if any) and pull out the file to see what was done last year. This was before email and the internet. Change was slow and communication was delivered through the post office. Everyone simply watched the mail for notifications of any report that was due. A few reports were completed electronically using FoxPro, and then you mailed a disk (yes, in the mail).
The first few years of my career, change happened very slowly. The changes for the year would be discussed at the MSBO Annual Conference. There would be plenty of time to discuss things before they were implemented. The passage of Proposal A in 1994 was that first big change for me. We spent the better part of a year discussing changes in property taxes, sales tax, retirement rates, etc.
The pace of change gradually seemed to pick up speed. I believe that this was only possible due to the implementation of email and the internet somewhere around 1998. That next big change that I remember was in 2001 with the implementation of GASB 34 – Government Wide Financial Statements and Management Discussion and Analysis. This was another project that took the better part of a year to implement.
It is easy to think back to these early years and the change that happened back then because there was so little change, and it happened so slowly. The transition from then until today is more of a blur. We are now looking at implementing GASB 101, all reports are submitted electronically, there are reports for everything, the retirement system has how many rates (does anyone really know), audit reports are almost double the pages, etc. MSBO now has various meetings throughout the year because change is constant.
For the people that have been in school business for a few years or longer, we had time to learn this information over time. We read instructions or other guidance, attend training, talk to others in the business, develop spreadsheets, and refine our knowledge over time. We have become the experts. Sure, we also rely on school attorneys, Certified Public Accountants, Michigan Department of Education, Department of Treasury, Office of Retirement Services, and vendors who are experts in their respective fields. But some aspects of our jobs are very specific for which we are the only experts. This applies equally to our members in transportation, maintenance, technology, human resources, payroll, etc. We need to share our knowledge, innovative ways of doing things, and cool spreadsheets. Our members are the experts, they are what makes the organization great!