Multiple Districts Can Share One Business Officer

School Administrator, Feb, 1995 by S. Reed Payne, Alfred J. Cali

Small school districts across the country are discovering the advantages of sharing a business administrator.

Consider the possibilities of having one person handle the purchasing for multiple districts, as well as the accounting, payroll, and other functions, thereby establishing a distribution of expertise and functions across district lines.

Technology in its various forms effectively can tie together two or more districts into a cooperative business office. This opens some challenging options for the administrators involved and those to whom they report.

As consultants to school districts with shared business officers, we have discovered some aspects of these arrangements that may be helpful to those considering such a move.

In any shared situation, it is difficult to provide superintendents and school boards with the precise level of professional support they may have received under a single-district operation.

New Realities

Some of our more obvious findings about shared positions are these:

* As with any itinerant professional staff member, the shared business official never will be in the right place at the right time. At least that will be the perception of those who rely upon the person for direct support and counsel.

* Personal contact with colleagues and time for quality supervision will become more limited. In the shared configuration, some tasks must be delegated to others.

* Establishing the position of shared school business official to serve two districts does not diminish the legal and other responsibilities of each district.

* Since paperwork gets first priority, the shared official will find it difficult to set aside time to reflect and plan.

* The shared business official may have to miss professional meetings and workshops that have high personal value.

* Doubling the shared business official's workload doesn't mean a doubling in salary, yet there should be a salary adjustment for added responsibilities.

Subtle Factors

The success or failure of the shared arrangement may hinge on more subtle aspects.

Superintendents and board members in cooperating districts eventually will conclude they are getting only a percentage of the business officer's time. When the position is viewed through a "time window" rather than a "getting the job done window," everyone feels negative stresses.

The shared official will respond to the needs of two superintendents, each having a unique personality and favored ways of doing things. Maintaining a good relationship between business officials and superintendents is crucial.

Superintendents who share a business official must recognize the necessity for making fundamental changes in the way each office operation is managed. Daily one-on-one contact no longer will take place. Superintendents need to understand this and adjust the ways they interact with their business officer.

Superintendents and business officials need to ensure the shared job description takes into account a changed environment. What must be deleted from the original school business official list of responsibilities often must be added to someone else's job description.

Building Anew

If you are going to make sharing a success, you will need team members who know each other, recognize the virtue of shared arrangements, and will work cooperatively and share their skills. A true team approach requires you to break barriers and take a hard look at how the job can best be accomplished.

Build your new operation from the bottom up by starting with a blank sheet. Take advantage of computer and communications technology. Adopt a "let's fix it" approach to dealing with glitches. Remember, it doesn't matter who flubbed a task. What matters is that we see that the task isn't flubbed again! Be prepared to find an opportunity in every error.

The first question always should be "Why do we do that task that way?" The second question is "Why do we do that task anyway?" The answers will surprise you and may contribute to a successful sharing of a school business official.

Reed Payne, a former superintendent and shared business administrator, edits the Administrative Computing newsletter in Clinton, N.Y. Al Call is a professor of educational administration at SUNY Albany in New York.