Fiscal First Aid for School Districts: Considerations for Schools Dealing with COVID-19

School districts, like so many governments, continue to face challenging situations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have had to shutter schools, convert to remote learning quickly, and move to remote working all while continuing to provide essential services to their students. As school districts look to the start of school and beyond, they continue to face new challenges during these uncertain times.

The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) has published a new, in-depth resource to help school districts address financial concerns: Fiscal First Aid for School Districts

In the GFOA resource, school district finance professionals can find tips, tools, and strategies on:

• Short term financial strategies, including information on staffing allocation formulas, leveraging staff to provide instructional support services, rethinking how instruction is delivered, and more.
• Long term financial strategies, including evaluating the strategic plan, realigning goals, evaluating how short term strategies roll into the long term, capital needs and planning, and more.

At the Office of the Washington State Auditor, we've been working hard to ensure the governments we support are receiving valuable information during this time. We hope you find this publicly available resource from GFOA a useful tool for your district's toolbox.