Beyond the Budget

Starting with Students

• Who Is Telling the Story of Your Students?
• What Does Student Success Actually Look Like?
• How to Measure What Matters
• Why Measuring This Way Is Better for Students
• Your District, Your SWOT

Making Budget Decisions

• How Budget Decisions Actually Get Made
• What the Evidence Tells You and What it Doesn’t
• Weighing Tradeoffs
• From Decision to Justification

Connecting Investments to Outcomes

• Why the Connection Gets Lost
• Short-Term Indicators – What to Look for in Year One
• Validation and Long-Term Outcomes
• Building Your Budget THRIVE Grid

Measuring What Matters

• The Limits of What We Currently Measure
• Leading and Lagging Indicators
• What Your District Is Already Measuring
• Identifying the Gaps

Communicating with Your Community

• Why Budget Communication Usuall Fails
• Who Your Audience Actually Is
• Writing for Parents and Taxpayers
• Building the Budget Newsletter

Putting It All Together

• The Questions That Matter
• Applying the Framework to a Real Decision
• Building Your District’s Communication Plan
• Where Do You Go from Here?