PRODUCT PARTNERSHIP
Engage your staff and community in budget decisions
Districts who partner with Allovue prioritize strategic budgeting and fiscal transparency—active community engagement is the next step. This product partnership makes it easy for Allovue customers to onboard with the budget simulation tool, Balancing Act.
MEET ALLOVUE PARTNER: BALANCING ACT
Balancing Act is an online tool that enables large groups to participate in shaping a budget. The simulator can be used by school districts to get input and buy-in about how to optimize limited financial resources.
School funding depends on public support
Collaboratively developing budgets in Allovue builds understanding and consensus with staff around resource decisions. If you need to further engage communities in the budget process or ask voters for additional funding, you can share a version of Balancing Act with them so that they can see what educators recommend and then weigh the tradeoffs with other resources.
Balanced budgets require tough decisions
With Balancing Act, districts can get feedback on a variety of budget areas and decisions, all within the constraints of annual revenue. Engage your community around resources and initiatives such as:
- Reducing class size
- Professional development
- Facility improvements
- Extracurricular activities
- Art and music education
- Teacher salaries
- Employment benefits
Authentic public engagement is complex. Balancing Act makes it easy.
Making engagement a habit allows best practices to become second nature to school districts. Districts enhance the budget development process with Allovue by using Balancing Act to:
- Get informed input on tough tradeoffs
- Involve employee groups and students in budget decisions
- Test and build support for new revenue measures and fees
- Guide capital planning
- Support budgeting for equity
- Create a facilitation tool for labor negotiations
WEBINAR REPLAY: BEYOND TRANSPARENCY
How can you productively engage families in budget planning and review? What best practices can be extended to the full budget planning cycle to strengthen fiscal transparency? Learn opportunities for building trust and recommendations for encouraging community participation in the budget feedback cycle.
